Scientists have revealed a rare class of meteorites that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all living creatures.
Surprisingly, this meteorite belongs to a class rarely seen on Earth, which increases scientists' astonishment at the "bad luck" of the dinosaurs.
When the asteroid Chicxulub, which was about 10 km wide, hit Earth, it shattered into pieces, leaving a huge crater in the location of the present-day Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and scattering its fragments thousands of miles away.
By analyzing the impact debris, scientists found that the meteorite belonged to the chondrite class, the oldest known rocks in our solar system, and was composed of carbon monoxide. This class of meteorites represents only 5% of the samples collected on Earth, making them extremely rare.
"The fact that Earth was hit by such a rare, distant ejecta really illustrates how unlucky the dinosaurs were," said Dr. Philippe Claes, a visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, who led the research team in collaboration with researchers from the Paris Institute of Earth Physics and the University of Paris.
Claes added that the findings do not change the basic theory about what happened during the impact, but they reduce the likelihood that sulfur, a flammable element in the meteorite, was the primary cause of the extinction of 75% of living species. Instead, the researchers suggest that "micro-reinforcement ejected into the atmosphere" was the main factor in the extinction catastrophe.
According to the research team, the Chicxulub asteroid likely originated from the outer reaches of the asteroid belt near Jupiter, or even from the distant fringes of the solar system. This would explain its unusual composition compared to more common meteorites found on Earth.
Despite this discovery, many questions about the asteroid and its impact remain under investigation. Some researchers suggest that climate change may have played a role long before the impact, while others focus on the effects of volcanic activity. What everyone agrees on, however, is that the scene was horrific.
Professors Monica Grady and Michael Benton from the University of Liverpool described the scene, saying: "Whether you were a dinosaur or a dung beetle, if you had been near the crater, you would have been instantly burned by the blast. Even if you were 2,000 km away from the impact site, you would most likely have died quickly due to the thermal radiation and supersonic winds that were spreading from the impact site."
This study reveals that the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs was not just an ordinary rock, but a rare projectile of the oldest material in the solar system, which came from distant regions to put an end to the age of giant reptiles.
Although the exact details of the disaster are still being studied, the picture painted by research confirms that the dinosaurs were victims of a classic case of "cosmic bad luck," as a rare meteorite struck them at a time and place that were enough to change the course of life on Earth forever.
