Bad Luck (and Fossil Fuels) May Have Doomed the Dinosaurs
According to a new study, the infamous asteroid had only a 13 percent chance of exterminating the giant reptiles.
You know the story, or at least some of it. Sixty-five million years ago, a rock about the size of Mount Everest careened out of space and slammed into modern-day Mexico. It opened a Hawaii-sized hole in the crust, launching soot and sulfur high into the atmosphere, blocking out the sun.
Within days, air and water temperatures plummeted around the world. Within weeks, the food chain on both the land and the ocean had collapsed. Within years, the dinosaurs—the rulers of Earth for more than 150 million years—had perished (except, of course, for the birds).
This moment, the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, is the most recent widespread die-outquite improbable.
