Chicxulub asteroid- end of dinosaur era It was the moment that reshaped our planet. One fateful day 66 million years ago, an asteroid the size of a city came burning through the skies at 40 times the speed of sound before crashing into the Yucatan peninsula . There, it exploded with the force of seven billion Hiroshima bombs, liquifying the rock below it, and blasting a crater some 180kmwide. The sound of the impact was heard around the world. In the minutes after, plumes of rock enveloped the Earth in suffocating dust. Wildfires broke out across multiple continents. When the dust finally settled, it was onto a planet that had lost 75 percent of its lifeforms. Today, the remnants of this long ago impact are all but invisible, buried beneath thousands of meters of limestone. Yet, the crater still remains, half hidden beneath the rainforests of the Yucatan, radiating out from the small town that gives it its name: Chicxulub . Chicxulub crater Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech, modified...
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