Professor Lewis Dartnell, Professor of Science Communication, wrote an article for BBC Sky at Night Magazine about the Chicxulub impact crater and the asteroid that killed it.
In the article, Professor Dartnell wrote: “For many years now, it’s been well established that the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period – which led to the extinction of the dinosaurs as well as the loss of 75% of all plant and animal species on Earth – was associated with a huge asteroid impact.
“The Chicxulub crater, buried beneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, was identified in 1990 as a giant impact feature – some 150km across and 20km deep…The calculated formation of this crater coincides with the mass extinction of the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago, and the impactor is believed to have been an asteroid about 10-15km in diameter.”
Discussing what caused the crater, he added: “The Chicxulub crater is one of the largest impact structures ever found on Earth. But there’s something else exceptional about this impact. It seems that the crater was created by a carbonaceous chondrite (CC) asteroid – a dark rock full of organic compounds. This is surprising because impacts from this sort of object are rare. They make up only 5% of all meteorites collected.”
Read the full article on the BBC Sky at Night website.
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