A rocky asteroid struck what is now Mexico 66 million years ago and caused the dinosaurs to die out, Austrian impact researcher Christian Köberl and colleagues have discovered. So it was not an ice-rich comet, as previously suspected.
The scientists were able to prove this using the ‘geochemical fingerprint’ of the impactor in the crater. The study was published in the journal ‘Science’.
A team led by Mario Fischer-Gödde from the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Cologne (Germany) examined the remains of the impactor in the Chicxulub crater in Mexico.
Based on the variants (isotopes) of the element ruthenium, it is “very clear that the impactor there was a carbonaceous asteroid,” the researchers explain. Part of the team: Christian Köberl, professor at the Department of Lithospheric Research at the University of Vienna.
‘Dinosaur Killer’ Was Created Outside Jupiter
The asteroid came from “beyond Jupiter,” meaning it formed much farther from the sun than Earth orbits it. Asteroids are chunks of rock and metal that orbit in regular orbits, like planets around the sun, but are much smaller. On very rare occasions, they stray and hurtle toward Earth, as the aforementioned impactor did 66 million years ago.
There are thousands of them in the solar system. Comets, on the other hand, are made up mostly of dust and ice. As they approach the sun, it evaporates and becomes visible as a “tail.” A meteor shower like the current Perseid shower is made up of dust grains that burn up as they enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Source: Krone
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