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A new study released on Friday captured a fossilized snapshot of the day, nearly 66 million years ago, when an asteroid hit the Earth, the fire was raining from the sky and the ground was shaking harder than any modern earthquake.
It was the day when almost all life on Earth was extinct, including dinosaurs.
Researchers say they have found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid struck in Mexico, including fish with shards of hot glass in the gills of burning debris that have returned to Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of a tsunami in the interior of the land and the melting of amber.
By the way, Jan Smit of the University of Amsterdam revealed that he and his colleagues had found traces of dinosaurs just before their disappearance.
Smit said the footprints – one of a vegetable hadrosaur and the other one of a meat eater, perhaps a small Tyrannosaurus Rex – are "irrefutable proof that the dinosaurs were alive at the moment of impact … They ran everywhere chasing each other "when they were submerged.
"It's the preserved coup de grace on a particular site. It's just spectacular, "said Jay Melosh, a geophysicist and impact scientist at Purdue University, who did not participate in the research but revised the paper released Friday by the National's Proceedings journal. Academy of Sciences.
Melosh called it the "discovery of the century" on the ground. But other experts have stated that, while some work is fascinating, they have serious concerns about the research, including the lack of access to this Hell Creek formation fossil site for scientists exteriors. . Hell Creek – which covers Montana, the Dakotas and Wyoming – is a treasure of fossils including many types of dinosaurs, mammals, reptiles and fish trapped in clay and stone there are 65 to 70 million of them. 39; years.
Kirk Johnson, director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, who also studied the Hell Creek area for 38 years, said the work on fish, glass and trees "illustrates some of the details of what It's past the day. It's very interesting and very valuable. But Johnson explained that because access to the site is limited, other scientists can not confirm the search. Smit said the restrictions were aimed at protecting the poachers' site.
Johnson also voiced concerns over claims by senior author Robert DePalma, a PhD student at the University of Kansas, published in an article in New Yorker magazine published Friday, but not in the 39, scientific article. DePalma did not return an email or phone requesting a comment.
For decades, the huge asteroid crash that caused the Chicxulub Crater in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico was considered the probable cause of this massive extinction often called "KT limit" for the division between two geological periods. But some scientists have insisted that massive volcanic activity played a role. Johnson and Melosh said that this helped prove the crash of an asteroid.
There were only a few dinosaur fossils from that time, but the traces are more convincing, Smit said.
There were more than dinosaurs, he said. The site includes ant nests, wasp nests, fragile preserved leaves and fish caught dying. He said that shortly after the fish died, his belly was swollen and these fossils showed no swelling.
The researchers said the tsunami in the interior of the earth caused fear of an earthquake of magnitude 10 to 11 caused by the crash of the asteroid. It is 350 times more powerful than the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.
Melosh, of Purdue, said while reading the study, that he did not stop saying "wow, wow, what a discovery".
The details that emerge are "breathtaking", he said.
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