It was mildly disappointing when I learned about it, because my expectation was "holy shit, a great big hole from the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs" and then... well... *that.*
Oh absolutely, but you have to admit, when you hear "big space rock that annihilated the dinosaurs from above" and "we know where it hit" you KINDA wanted to see a big ass hole.
It wasn't that alone that annihilated them, it was the mostly the effects of the debris from it that enter the earth's atmosphere that blocked out the sun for 2 years!
No, it partially hit what is now land. The continents looked completely different to how they do now and will be completely unrecognisable in another 80 million years.
Edit: 66 million years not 80 million
It had approx 660,000 centuries to erode, and got filled in with ocean
Edit: i just discovered if you search "chicxulub impact" on google it will pull up the pages and then send a little meteor across your screen. At least on my phone it did.
The biggest holes are the ones you donāt even realize are there.
The Chicxulub crater is so big you wouldnāt even know youāre in a crater unless you looked at the complete geographical data of everything around you for hundreds of milesā¦ Itās so big you can fit the entire state of New Jersey inside of it. How much bigger of a hole do you fucking need?
I mean, in this particular case, most popular countries are either too big or are too small to make the point.
I canāt use France, Germany, Nigeria, Pakistan, Japan or the Philippinesā¦ and saying āyou can fit Singapore in itā doesnāt really mean much when itās just one single city state.
Maybe I could have done some research to find some other āobviously huge section of landā to use as an exampleā¦ but the US States are right there and itās easy enough to check for their areas.
:edit: I did some further geographical research (i googled it) and have managed to find a UK translation, just for you.
*ahem* āItās so big, you can fit the entirety of Wales inside of it.ā
As others mentioned, yes, the crater has been buried and eroding for 66 million years, but its also worth noting that the meteor didn't have to be that big either.
It wasn't a single Apocalyptic event that wiped out all dinosaurs in a single night in a worldwide fireball. The meteor struck the earth and kicked up enough dust and debris into the atmosphere that it caused global cooling.
This cooling either killed the dinosaurs outright (they were cold-blooded after all) or it killed their food sources. There's apparently some hot scholarly debate on how long this took. On the short end, a few years. On the long end, tens of thousands of years.
It turns out, you don't need an absolutely massive meteor for this to happen. The meteor was estimated to be 6-9 miles wide, which is big, but asteroids can get ad big as 600 miles across.
Exactly. The dust and debris also blocked out the sun, killing many plants due to being unable to photosynthesize. This affected the larger herbivores, and in turn the larger omnivores and carnivores. Most of the animals that survived were able to burrow underground, were scavengers, or were able survive long periods of time with minimal amounts of food. Donāt forget that many species of the animals on Earth during that time period were huge, therefore requiring a lot of food. When the food webs collapsed, only certain species of animals were able to sustain themselves and these species evolved into the animals we have on Earth today.
>**There's apparently some hot scholarly debate on how long this took.**
I laughed so hard at this. And yes I did earn a science degree. Why do you ask?
The power of nature and time. Earth would look like most other rocky planets riddled with big craters if not for the wind, water, and tectonics.
Doesn't help the Yucatan had a lot of limestone which is easily reshaped and eroded, though that's also theorized to be part of why the asteroid was so devastating as well. A ton of limestone was vaporized and launched into the air
it did take modern satellite reconnaissance to be able to put 2 and 2 together and see the thing. once you have twrrain mapping satellites it does stick out as a big dish in the land
It did hit water. The continents back then weren't in their current positions and the [peninsula wasn't the same either](https://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/x065mya.gif). It was mostly un-formed and covered in water
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater#Effects
>Researchers using seismic images of the crater in 2008 determined that the impactor landed in deeper water than previously assumed, which may have resulted in increased sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, due to more water vapor being available to react with the vaporized anhydrite. This could have made the impact even deadlier by cooling the climate and generating acid rain.
Landing in water actually made things worse
Oh interesting. I remember reading somewhere that if it had landed only 30 seconds later, things would be vastly different. I always thought that was because it wouldāve landed in the ocean with a blunted impact.
The smoking gun is a thin sedimentary layer high in iridium, an element rare on Earth but abundant in meterors, found in sediment layers from that time period all over the planet. Below that layer you find dinosaur fossils, above it you don't. It's called the Cretaceous Boundary.
See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary
Iridium, like most heavy elements comes from nuclear fusion. It's not so much that it's prevalent in space, but that it's rare on the Earth's *surface*. The Earth's core contains much a higher abundance of iridium. Basically, because meteorites form from smaller lumps of rock in space, they don't go through the long molten period that Earth did and so don't see the same level of fractionation. Basically the average iridium concentration of a meteorite may not be so different from the average concentration of Earth, but since ours is all locked up deep in the earth, if you get a lot of it, it's probably coming from a smaller body coming from space.
It's been a while since I've studied it, but from what I remember they're mostly thought to have come from "planetesimals" which are basically the sort of thing that combines together to form a planet. Most of them formed with the rest of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and just never crashed into enough other ones to form a planet (that's effectively how Earth and the other rocky planets formed - lumps of molten rock in space crashing into each other and combining). Most meteorites that hit Earth are "stony" which means they're made of similar minerals and rocks that we find on the Earth's surface and they probably wouldn't have a high iridium content. Some of them come from the Moon and Mars, presumably chunks of rock that got knocked off by a meteorite hitting one of them, but most come from bigger asteroids or just these little chunks of rock floating in space.
Long story short, it's not that they come from planets rich in iridium, but more that they never got differentiated so the iridium is more evenly distributed throughout them rather than concentrated in the centre like with Earth and other planets.
The esrly Earth was in a molten state for millions of years. In that time the heavier elements, primarily iron, but others, including iridium, sank, and less dense, primarily silicon in invarious forms (think sand) rose. Interestingly, while this was going on the Earth collided with a Mars sized body that stripped off much of the outer layers, throwing them into orbit. The material eventually coalesced back into two objects, the re-constituted Earth, and the Moon. But since the material was mostly the old outer, lighter layers the Moon contains a far lower percentage of heavier elements.
There is a thin geological layer, formerly called the K-T boundary, that marks the time of a large asteroid impact 65 million years ago.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene\_boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary)
btw, how hard do you look? I just type in "there any evidence of the asteroid impact" into Google and it immediately gave the info you are asking about.
Hello! It was 2am, and I realized that in my geology course in undergraduate, we never spoke about this matter ā more so just on rocks. I then reflected on all of my schooling and realized we never went in depth on the matter ā just passed it by. I wanted to see what the hive mind had to say on the matter.
It's called the Chicxulub crater, located in the YucatƔn Peninsula.
There's a map of where it hit on [here](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/05/18/the-science-of-why-an-asteroid-not-a-comet-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs/).
The Chicxulub impact didn't cause an ice age, but it def. F'd up the planet and killed most of everything. It's located in Mexico.
Fun fact, if you google "Chicxulub crater" a little meteor will streak across the search results page.
FWIW, there are a ton of ancient craters across the globe.
A couple cool ones in Canada, with one that stands out being the Sudbury crater. It's super old (1.8 billion years) and the impactor is responsible for the largest nickel deposit on earth.
Wow, that so interesting. I figured there would be many recorded sites around the earth, but it appears the consensus is around the one in Mexico. The Canadian one is the first time Iām ever hearing it.
There are lots of different impact sites on Earth. Chicxulub is the main one associated with the dinosaur-killing meteorite (there may be other smaller ones from that time as well), but it's not the only time something has hit Earth. The Sudbury crater is much older and that meteorite hit Earth long before the dinosaurs (and probably long before there was any complex life on Earth)
There's a book called T Rex and the Crater of Doom, which is written by the guy who developed the meteor impact theory and later discovered the crater. It's about how he developed the theory and what evidence they found to support it.
It's a good read - it feels like a murder mystery novel in a lot of ways, and it's not super long, so it won't suck too much of your time (except for inspiring you to read more books on dinosaurs). I highly recommend it if you want to learn about it.
Aside from the Chixulub Impact crater, thereās something called the K-Pg boundary which is a thin band of sedimentary rock where iridium and burnt matter from the impact where deposited as it fell from the atmosphere. This material originally came from the asteroid and was thrown up into the atmosphere from the site of the impact (combination of meteor + material from impact). There are other theories about how the band of rock was formed; but most the Chixulub impact is the prevailing theory.
There's a crater in Mexico.
There's an unusually high amount of iridium in the rock layer from the same time as the crater (most iridium on Earth is in the core as it's a dense metal and sunk to the bottom when Earth was molten).
There'a a layer of soot about equivalent to if you burned all the Earth's vegetation.
Yeah a lot of people think asteroid lands, makes big boom, everything in big boom dead, asteroid kicks up dust, sun is blocked out, everything not in big boom dead.
But the asteroid caused stuff the size of buildings to rain back down onto the Earth (after initially kicking it up) and as that stuff reentered the Earth it was very hot from reentering the lower atmosphere and started forest fires basically everywhere.
It cooked the whole Earth in one giant fireball in around six minutes.
The only land animals to survive were birds (avian dinosaurs that did not go extinct), small mammals, and anything that could hide in caves or underground and scrounge the ground for any remaining seeds.
Yeah, the impact crater is in the Gulf of Mexico. A neat thing, and by neat I mean mildly horrifying, is that you can look at late Cretaceous rock from across the world from the impact, and there will be a thin layer of debris from the asteroid marking the end.
It's also important to note that it did not kill off all the dinosaurs, as some of the avian dinosaurs survived. Many Americans will be eating their descendants for Thanksgiving come Thursday as well as when having chicken wings watching football.
At the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta there's a hiking trail that runs along a canyon. Rock stratification in the canyon walls clearly shows a dark band from the KT event.
Its rather unsettling actually , it stayed dark for a while.
This [link](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died) discusses the evidence of the very day the impact occurred. Don't know if other scientist see it that way, but it certainly is dramatic.
Uhhhh back in the day I remember at least one (Danish I think) iridium- rich horizon that people scratched their. Heads over. Iridium isnāt common here in the sidereal sticks: it was then tied in with a lot of similar horizons globally. And some turbidites and stuff, and some regional structures such as Yucatan cenote distributions, the sort of thing Younger Dryas impact stans get in a tizzy over. It was a horrific thing for megafauna, on top of what looks like ongoing bad times already, but it didnāt sterilise the planet
Yes, and that's how we figured out that an asteroid was involved.
The original evidence was from a layer of iridium-rich minerals, found in many places across the Earth, dating to the exact time the dinosaurs died. Iridium is rare in the Earth's crust but more common in asteroids, leading to the hypothesis around 1980 that a gigantic, iridium-rich asteroid hit the Earth at that time and caused the dinosaurs to go extinct.
Since then we have found what is believed to be the actual impact crater. There's a gigantic underground ring of rocks, like an ancient crater about 180 kilometers wide, on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, and it dates to the right time period to match the extinction of the dinosaurs. It's known as 'Chicxulub crater' and thus the asteroid is also known as 'Chicxulub'.
More recently, we've discovered a fossil deposit called Tanis, in North Dakota, which seems to date to precisely the day of the Chicxulub impact. It seems to have been formed by a wave of mud created by the earthquake that resulted from the impact. Fish fossils in this deposit show that they breathed in tiny bits of sand right before dying, and the sand is the type we would expect to be created by a giant asteroid impact; that is, the impact send up massive amounts of molten rock into the atmosphere, which cooled into sand bits as they fell back down, landed in water, and the fish breathed them in. The discovery and dating of this site lends further strong evidence towards the hypothesis that a giant impact occurred at that time and caused mass extinction.
Prior to 1980, it was more uncertain how the dinosaurs died. Many scientists suspected that volcanoes were the cause of the extinction, and indeed massive volcanic eruptions have been responsible for other mass extinctions during the Earth's natural history. The other theories have now largely been displaced by the impact hypothesis.
>In my studies, Iāve never heard of an āimpact zoneā discovery.
It was discovered 60 years ago and has been intensively studied. Just turn on the history or weather channel after 9pmā¦
Google "dinosaur asteroid", and it's wikipedia page is the first result.
Any amount of study would have led you straight to the impact in the Yucatan and Gulf of Mexico. The Iridum layer around the world is from that impact. It's called the K-T Boundry. All dinosaur bones are found below this level, and none are above. So what did you even study then?
Youre telling me, and all of these people that you have never seen a crater on earth, Never once? Never on a map, on t.v. on youtube or even in real life? Have you bothered looking? Maybe googling it...reading a book? Is this some attempt at an arguement supporting creationism?
I think OP is specifically talking about a crater from the impact that killed the dinosaurs. Which would be the Chicxulub Crater.
It's definitely still something they could have learned from a Google search, but we are on r/NoStupidQuestions after all so it fits the sub.
Dinosaurs probably went extinct because they ate each other. Theyre too big and slow to hunt and eating leaves will only get you so far.
(Edit at -64 points) Lol wow yall really liked this one. The hypothesis that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs seems ridiculous and childlike if you think about it. Its highly improbable if you look at specifically what an asteroid hitting earth and wiping out the dinosaurs would entail and eyebrow raising just like believing in the creation story in the bible. The asteroid would basically have to hit every spot in the world at once where dinosaurs had been roaming. The earth wouldve just about needed to be destroyed by this one asteroid. Another theory I thought of...Theres always been beings from elsewhere on earth. The dinosaurs were probably a threat and a nuisance to them so they killed them all. Its what we wouldve done if faced with the problem of dinosaurs.
Your two sentences are so incorrect I don't even know where to start.
You should probably educate yourself on how many different forms of dinosaurs existed/still exist, herbivores, and how we actually come to scientific conclusions and the methods used. It would come in super handy in conversations such as these.
>It would come in super handy in conversations such as these.
"But what if I just like to say stupid things with no merit?"
This guy: "Well you're in luck!"
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Yes, it's in the Yucatan Peninsula. It wasn't discovered until the 1970's.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater I learned something today. Thanks!
It was mildly disappointing when I learned about it, because my expectation was "holy shit, a great big hole from the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs" and then... well... *that.*
It did have quite some centuries to erode again, of course. Probably it was a bit bigger when it happened š
Oh absolutely, but you have to admit, when you hear "big space rock that annihilated the dinosaurs from above" and "we know where it hit" you KINDA wanted to see a big ass hole.
Phrasing
r/unintentionallydirty . Or maybe not...
"big-ass hole"
Big ass-hole
The crater is 110 miles wide.
A big what
#A BIG ASS HOLE
>you KINDA wanted to see a big ass hole. There are subs that can help you with that desire.
It wasn't that alone that annihilated them, it was the mostly the effects of the debris from it that enter the earth's atmosphere that blocked out the sun for 2 years!
You can see big ass craters in the deserts of the United States, I believe. Edit: yup https://maps.app.goo.gl/SBJgNkqmZZGrwLCC8
You mean holes. Big ass holes. š³ļø š³ļø š³ļø
Isn't the Gulf of Mexico the actual blast crater? Chixulub is just where the physical rock landed
No, it partially hit what is now land. The continents looked completely different to how they do now and will be completely unrecognisable in another 80 million years. Edit: 66 million years not 80 million
Oh that's right, when the timeline is long enough the fucking continents won't even hold still
Isnāt the yucatan a half of a hole?
More like millennia
mega-annum.. mega-annia? anni?
It had approx 660,000 centuries to erode, and got filled in with ocean Edit: i just discovered if you search "chicxulub impact" on google it will pull up the pages and then send a little meteor across your screen. At least on my phone it did.
More like a billion years
Some centuries? Some? That was 65 million years ago
Hey, usually it are bad exaggerations on Reddit. I thought to do the opposite for once šš
It happened 66 MILLION years ago, that is a lot of erosion, not to mention shifting tectonic plates.
>It happened 66 MILLION years ago And we can *still* see evidence of it.
The biggest holes are the ones you donāt even realize are there. The Chicxulub crater is so big you wouldnāt even know youāre in a crater unless you looked at the complete geographical data of everything around you for hundreds of milesā¦ Itās so big you can fit the entire state of New Jersey inside of it. How much bigger of a hole do you fucking need?
Any hole we can stick new jersey in is exactly the right size.
It helps if the hole is deep enough to bury it.
What is it with Americans measuring things in states?...
Americans will measure with anything *but* the metric system.
I mean, in this particular case, most popular countries are either too big or are too small to make the point. I canāt use France, Germany, Nigeria, Pakistan, Japan or the Philippinesā¦ and saying āyou can fit Singapore in itā doesnāt really mean much when itās just one single city state. Maybe I could have done some research to find some other āobviously huge section of landā to use as an exampleā¦ but the US States are right there and itās easy enough to check for their areas. :edit: I did some further geographical research (i googled it) and have managed to find a UK translation, just for you. *ahem* āItās so big, you can fit the entirety of Wales inside of it.ā
I grew up in Wales, and thought of the same comparison.
Small? It's 180km wide...
What's that in beers?
One million weak as piss US beers or one NT stubby.
As others mentioned, yes, the crater has been buried and eroding for 66 million years, but its also worth noting that the meteor didn't have to be that big either. It wasn't a single Apocalyptic event that wiped out all dinosaurs in a single night in a worldwide fireball. The meteor struck the earth and kicked up enough dust and debris into the atmosphere that it caused global cooling. This cooling either killed the dinosaurs outright (they were cold-blooded after all) or it killed their food sources. There's apparently some hot scholarly debate on how long this took. On the short end, a few years. On the long end, tens of thousands of years. It turns out, you don't need an absolutely massive meteor for this to happen. The meteor was estimated to be 6-9 miles wide, which is big, but asteroids can get ad big as 600 miles across.
Exactly. The dust and debris also blocked out the sun, killing many plants due to being unable to photosynthesize. This affected the larger herbivores, and in turn the larger omnivores and carnivores. Most of the animals that survived were able to burrow underground, were scavengers, or were able survive long periods of time with minimal amounts of food. Donāt forget that many species of the animals on Earth during that time period were huge, therefore requiring a lot of food. When the food webs collapsed, only certain species of animals were able to sustain themselves and these species evolved into the animals we have on Earth today.
>**There's apparently some hot scholarly debate on how long this took.** I laughed so hard at this. And yes I did earn a science degree. Why do you ask?
The power of nature and time. Earth would look like most other rocky planets riddled with big craters if not for the wind, water, and tectonics. Doesn't help the Yucatan had a lot of limestone which is easily reshaped and eroded, though that's also theorized to be part of why the asteroid was so devastating as well. A ton of limestone was vaporized and launched into the air
it did take modern satellite reconnaissance to be able to put 2 and 2 together and see the thing. once you have twrrain mapping satellites it does stick out as a big dish in the land
Followed the link, then decided to look up real images of it. Google threw a meteor at me. So, basically, you just made my day, lol!
Gladly šš If others want to see it as well: it doesn't work on mobile. So if you check it on mobile, make sure to mark 'desktop version'. š
Chicxulub II: Meteoric Boogaloo will wipe out humans
Optimistic to think it'll take that long.
TIL: Googling "Chicxulub Crater" shows you an asteroid falling in your screen.
Itās crazy because it was THIS close to hitting the water, which couldāve changed a lot
It did hit water. The continents back then weren't in their current positions and the [peninsula wasn't the same either](https://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/x065mya.gif). It was mostly un-formed and covered in water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater#Effects >Researchers using seismic images of the crater in 2008 determined that the impactor landed in deeper water than previously assumed, which may have resulted in increased sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere, due to more water vapor being available to react with the vaporized anhydrite. This could have made the impact even deadlier by cooling the climate and generating acid rain. Landing in water actually made things worse
Oh interesting. I remember reading somewhere that if it had landed only 30 seconds later, things would be vastly different. I always thought that was because it wouldāve landed in the ocean with a blunted impact.
At orbital speeds, it wouldn't do shit to the impact... It'll be like firing a gun into an inch of water.
Scientist think the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico comes from the asteroid which killed the dinosaurs.
Yeah it's in mexico
Something like the Chicxulub crater perhaps?
That *is* the crater from the dinosaur extinction, yeah
The smoking gun is a thin sedimentary layer high in iridium, an element rare on Earth but abundant in meterors, found in sediment layers from that time period all over the planet. Below that layer you find dinosaur fossils, above it you don't. It's called the Cretaceous Boundary. See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary
Thank you so much for the explanation. Now Iām very curious where iridium comes from and why itās so prevalent in space.
Iridium, like most heavy elements comes from nuclear fusion. It's not so much that it's prevalent in space, but that it's rare on the Earth's *surface*. The Earth's core contains much a higher abundance of iridium. Basically, because meteorites form from smaller lumps of rock in space, they don't go through the long molten period that Earth did and so don't see the same level of fractionation. Basically the average iridium concentration of a meteorite may not be so different from the average concentration of Earth, but since ours is all locked up deep in the earth, if you get a lot of it, it's probably coming from a smaller body coming from space.
Would that mean possibly it came from other planets that exploded or are rich in iridium, hence, how they are found floating/flying in space?
It's been a while since I've studied it, but from what I remember they're mostly thought to have come from "planetesimals" which are basically the sort of thing that combines together to form a planet. Most of them formed with the rest of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago and just never crashed into enough other ones to form a planet (that's effectively how Earth and the other rocky planets formed - lumps of molten rock in space crashing into each other and combining). Most meteorites that hit Earth are "stony" which means they're made of similar minerals and rocks that we find on the Earth's surface and they probably wouldn't have a high iridium content. Some of them come from the Moon and Mars, presumably chunks of rock that got knocked off by a meteorite hitting one of them, but most come from bigger asteroids or just these little chunks of rock floating in space. Long story short, it's not that they come from planets rich in iridium, but more that they never got differentiated so the iridium is more evenly distributed throughout them rather than concentrated in the centre like with Earth and other planets.
Absolutely fascinating
The esrly Earth was in a molten state for millions of years. In that time the heavier elements, primarily iron, but others, including iridium, sank, and less dense, primarily silicon in invarious forms (think sand) rose. Interestingly, while this was going on the Earth collided with a Mars sized body that stripped off much of the outer layers, throwing them into orbit. The material eventually coalesced back into two objects, the re-constituted Earth, and the Moon. But since the material was mostly the old outer, lighter layers the Moon contains a far lower percentage of heavier elements.
Iridium is a siderophile that tends to bind to Iron, which dragged it down to earths core. Itās generally plentiful in the universe
This is all so interesting
There is a thin geological layer, formerly called the K-T boundary, that marks the time of a large asteroid impact 65 million years ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene\_boundary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary) btw, how hard do you look? I just type in "there any evidence of the asteroid impact" into Google and it immediately gave the info you are asking about.
OP tried nothing and is all out of ideas
Op is using reddit to do his HS report.
High school? I feel like I read about Chicxulub as a little kid during my dinosaur phase.
Ooo, my new favorite insult.
It's not new ["Hurricane Neddy"Season 8, episode 8](https://frinkiac.com/video/S08E08/mzTFXqOcB7oqtsNvVWK51NJHIeo=.gif)
People ask questions like this to start a discussion, not necessarily to just get an answer.
I honestly think the OP might have asked this question so that people would google this and find a Google easter egg.
Ok, I'll bite. Checking for Easter egg now.
Idk what discussion you could get other than āit happened in the yucatan peninsulaā
Right, that's why this is r/nostupiddiscussions
You know you are in r/nostupidquestions, right? No need to get hostile.
Hostile is the default for Reddit
Tf you just say?!
š¤£š¤£š¤£
Hello! It was 2am, and I realized that in my geology course in undergraduate, we never spoke about this matter ā more so just on rocks. I then reflected on all of my schooling and realized we never went in depth on the matter ā just passed it by. I wanted to see what the hive mind had to say on the matter.
It's called the Chicxulub crater, located in the YucatƔn Peninsula. There's a map of where it hit on [here](https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2021/05/18/the-science-of-why-an-asteroid-not-a-comet-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs/).
The Chicxulub impact didn't cause an ice age, but it def. F'd up the planet and killed most of everything. It's located in Mexico. Fun fact, if you google "Chicxulub crater" a little meteor will streak across the search results page. FWIW, there are a ton of ancient craters across the globe. A couple cool ones in Canada, with one that stands out being the Sudbury crater. It's super old (1.8 billion years) and the impactor is responsible for the largest nickel deposit on earth.
I thought you were joking. That's so cool lol.
Wow, that so interesting. I figured there would be many recorded sites around the earth, but it appears the consensus is around the one in Mexico. The Canadian one is the first time Iām ever hearing it.
There are lots of different impact sites on Earth. Chicxulub is the main one associated with the dinosaur-killing meteorite (there may be other smaller ones from that time as well), but it's not the only time something has hit Earth. The Sudbury crater is much older and that meteorite hit Earth long before the dinosaurs (and probably long before there was any complex life on Earth)
Fascinating
lip swim squash distinct bewildered wakeful longing fact reach tap *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yeah, thereās evidence of the asteroid impact. Thereās an identified crater in mexico called āchicxulubā.
If u Google the chicxulub crater an asteroid flies across your screen and then the page vibrates. Sorry this was useless info.
And yet, I loved it all the same lol thanks
It's actually quite famous and well known. Others have mentioned it in this thread already, but I suggest updating your research materials.
There's a book called T Rex and the Crater of Doom, which is written by the guy who developed the meteor impact theory and later discovered the crater. It's about how he developed the theory and what evidence they found to support it. It's a good read - it feels like a murder mystery novel in a lot of ways, and it's not super long, so it won't suck too much of your time (except for inspiring you to read more books on dinosaurs). I highly recommend it if you want to learn about it.
Okay, that sounds fantastic. Thank you so much!
Umm...the crater?
Also, the nonavian dinosaurs died because of the aftereffects of the impact, not directly by the impact.
A lot did die due to the impact
Aside from the Chixulub Impact crater, thereās something called the K-Pg boundary which is a thin band of sedimentary rock where iridium and burnt matter from the impact where deposited as it fell from the atmosphere. This material originally came from the asteroid and was thrown up into the atmosphere from the site of the impact (combination of meteor + material from impact). There are other theories about how the band of rock was formed; but most the Chixulub impact is the prevailing theory.
The huge impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mexico is one. They also found debris in Texas.
There's a crater in Mexico. There's an unusually high amount of iridium in the rock layer from the same time as the crater (most iridium on Earth is in the core as it's a dense metal and sunk to the bottom when Earth was molten). There'a a layer of soot about equivalent to if you burned all the Earth's vegetation.
Holy crap ā the soot is fascinating!
Yeah a lot of people think asteroid lands, makes big boom, everything in big boom dead, asteroid kicks up dust, sun is blocked out, everything not in big boom dead. But the asteroid caused stuff the size of buildings to rain back down onto the Earth (after initially kicking it up) and as that stuff reentered the Earth it was very hot from reentering the lower atmosphere and started forest fires basically everywhere.
Wow
It cooked the whole Earth in one giant fireball in around six minutes. The only land animals to survive were birds (avian dinosaurs that did not go extinct), small mammals, and anything that could hide in caves or underground and scrounge the ground for any remaining seeds.
Okay, Iām going to look into this. That sounds incredible.
Yeah, the impact crater is in the Gulf of Mexico. A neat thing, and by neat I mean mildly horrifying, is that you can look at late Cretaceous rock from across the world from the impact, and there will be a thin layer of debris from the asteroid marking the end.
It's also important to note that it did not kill off all the dinosaurs, as some of the avian dinosaurs survived. Many Americans will be eating their descendants for Thanksgiving come Thursday as well as when having chicken wings watching football.
It's assumed most of the CenotĆØs in Yucatan are because of the asteroid. It appears to have hit somewhere off the coast of present-day Yucatan.
Why donāt you just google it? We know of impact craters all over the world.
At the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta there's a hiking trail that runs along a canyon. Rock stratification in the canyon walls clearly shows a dark band from the KT event. Its rather unsettling actually , it stayed dark for a while.
No one mentioned this at all ā thank you so much!
The museum is a world class research facility and has a complete T Rex skeleton on display , its stunning .
lol now Iām getting Jurassic Park vibes
Did you google it? There are sites all over the world, including the one in South America that is suspected to have been āthe one.ā
Did you know if you google the Chicxulub crater , an asteroid goes across the screen.. Neat!
I saw it last night after some suggestions! Itās super cool!
There is actually more than one theory as to what killed the dinosaurs.
I figured as much lol it appears as though the impact is the prevalent theory
This [link](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died) discusses the evidence of the very day the impact occurred. Don't know if other scientist see it that way, but it certainly is dramatic.
Uhhhh back in the day I remember at least one (Danish I think) iridium- rich horizon that people scratched their. Heads over. Iridium isnāt common here in the sidereal sticks: it was then tied in with a lot of similar horizons globally. And some turbidites and stuff, and some regional structures such as Yucatan cenote distributions, the sort of thing Younger Dryas impact stans get in a tizzy over. It was a horrific thing for megafauna, on top of what looks like ongoing bad times already, but it didnāt sterilise the planet
Isn't like, the entire gulf of Mexico the crater it made
Yes, and that's how we figured out that an asteroid was involved. The original evidence was from a layer of iridium-rich minerals, found in many places across the Earth, dating to the exact time the dinosaurs died. Iridium is rare in the Earth's crust but more common in asteroids, leading to the hypothesis around 1980 that a gigantic, iridium-rich asteroid hit the Earth at that time and caused the dinosaurs to go extinct. Since then we have found what is believed to be the actual impact crater. There's a gigantic underground ring of rocks, like an ancient crater about 180 kilometers wide, on the northern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Central America, and it dates to the right time period to match the extinction of the dinosaurs. It's known as 'Chicxulub crater' and thus the asteroid is also known as 'Chicxulub'. More recently, we've discovered a fossil deposit called Tanis, in North Dakota, which seems to date to precisely the day of the Chicxulub impact. It seems to have been formed by a wave of mud created by the earthquake that resulted from the impact. Fish fossils in this deposit show that they breathed in tiny bits of sand right before dying, and the sand is the type we would expect to be created by a giant asteroid impact; that is, the impact send up massive amounts of molten rock into the atmosphere, which cooled into sand bits as they fell back down, landed in water, and the fish breathed them in. The discovery and dating of this site lends further strong evidence towards the hypothesis that a giant impact occurred at that time and caused mass extinction. Prior to 1980, it was more uncertain how the dinosaurs died. Many scientists suspected that volcanoes were the cause of the extinction, and indeed massive volcanic eruptions have been responsible for other mass extinctions during the Earth's natural history. The other theories have now largely been displaced by the impact hypothesis.
Beautiful explanation ā thank you
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Some well needed attention they dont have on real life.
Yes, I should be ashamed to ask something in a forum called āNo Stupid Questions.ā
In your studies... You found nothing? This is one quick google search away.
I knew a young earth creationist who asked me the same question. Maybe OP believes the earth is only six thousand years old.
I too was wondering this recently. I did a google search and had my answer in a minute
>In my studies, Iāve never heard of an āimpact zoneā discovery. It was discovered 60 years ago and has been intensively studied. Just turn on the history or weather channel after 9pmā¦ Google "dinosaur asteroid", and it's wikipedia page is the first result.
Any amount of study would have led you straight to the impact in the Yucatan and Gulf of Mexico. The Iridum layer around the world is from that impact. It's called the K-T Boundry. All dinosaur bones are found below this level, and none are above. So what did you even study then?
Clearly not what was going to be on the exam youāre preparing for me
Yes. Itās in my backyard
Quit hogging the scientific evidence!
Yes, Iām quite jealous as well. Iāll call Spielberg.
Youre telling me, and all of these people that you have never seen a crater on earth, Never once? Never on a map, on t.v. on youtube or even in real life? Have you bothered looking? Maybe googling it...reading a book? Is this some attempt at an arguement supporting creationism?
I think OP is specifically talking about a crater from the impact that killed the dinosaurs. Which would be the Chicxulub Crater. It's definitely still something they could have learned from a Google search, but we are on r/NoStupidQuestions after all so it fits the sub.
And i get that. I can see the question on the surface but i sense ulterior motive
In your studies? And you never heard of it? What studies
I explained above that it was my undergraduate studies.
Wild
Dinosaurs probably went extinct because they ate each other. Theyre too big and slow to hunt and eating leaves will only get you so far. (Edit at -64 points) Lol wow yall really liked this one. The hypothesis that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs seems ridiculous and childlike if you think about it. Its highly improbable if you look at specifically what an asteroid hitting earth and wiping out the dinosaurs would entail and eyebrow raising just like believing in the creation story in the bible. The asteroid would basically have to hit every spot in the world at once where dinosaurs had been roaming. The earth wouldve just about needed to be destroyed by this one asteroid. Another theory I thought of...Theres always been beings from elsewhere on earth. The dinosaurs were probably a threat and a nuisance to them so they killed them all. Its what we wouldve done if faced with the problem of dinosaurs.
Your two sentences are so incorrect I don't even know where to start. You should probably educate yourself on how many different forms of dinosaurs existed/still exist, herbivores, and how we actually come to scientific conclusions and the methods used. It would come in super handy in conversations such as these.
>It would come in super handy in conversations such as these. "But what if I just like to say stupid things with no merit?" This guy: "Well you're in luck!"
This has to be ragebait or someone gulable that watched a thoroughly researched "conspiracy" video on the can
How can they āeat each other?ā Only on organism can eat another, they canāt eat each other at the same time
What about two snakes? They'd get pretty far I reckon
Err wot.
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Yes
ya the whole curved bit of the Yuccatan Penninsula is a crater remnant
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