Asteroid dust that fell to Earth caused a 15-year winter that wiped out the dinosaurs Sciences

Silicate dust coming from An asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago The sky darkened for 15 years and led to Extinction of dinosaurs And three-quarters of life on the planet, reveals a study published on Monday (30).

The results of the research published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Support the previous hypothesis Which indicates that the winter caused by the Chicxulub asteroid impact was the result of dust raised by the impact.

Latest theories On the other hand, it has been confirmed that the sulfur released after the impact – or soot from the large fires it caused – Preventing sunlight from reaching the planet The earth was plunged into a long winter.

🔎 The study published on Monday indicates this Very fine particles of silicate dust, coming from crushed rock, will remain suspended in the atmosphere for 15 years. Lack of light could have caused a Average temperatures drop to 15°C.

In the 1980s, scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez, father and son, suggested that the disappearance of dinosaurs was due to… Climate change After the asteroid collision that covered the world with dust.

But his hypothesis was questioned until a decade later, the massive crater created by Chicxulub was discovered in the present-day Yucatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico.

The theory that it was sulfur, more than dust, that changed the planet’s climate gained ground because it was believed that this type of dust was not the right size to “remain in the atmosphere,” said Ozgur Karatkin, a researcher at the Royal Earth Observatory. Belgium and co-author of the study.

However, an international team of scientists was able to identify dust particles resulting from the asteroid impact in the Tanis fossil deposits, in North Dakota, in the United States. The size of these particles ranges between 0.8 and 8 micrometers.

By feeding their data into climate models similar to those used today, the researchers determined that dust played a more important role in the extinction of life than previously thought.

Simulations revealed that 75% of all suspended matter in the atmosphere is dust, 24% is sulfur, and the rest is soot.

Karatkin concluded that dust particles “completely inhibit photosynthesis” in plants for at least a year, leading to a “catastrophic collapse” of life.