CUTTING EDGE

Tracking down a dinosaur killer

Scientists think they’ve found the origin of the meteor that killed the dinosaurs

For many years now, it’s been well established that the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period – which to the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the loss of 75 per cent of all plant and animal species on Earth – was associated with a huge impact. The Chicxulub crater, buried beneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, was identified in 1990 as a giant impact feature – some 150km across and 20km deep (although by now well filled-in with sediments). The calculated formation of this crater coincides with the mass extinction,