![]() Using a core sample collected in 2016, University of Texas at Austin geologist Sean Gulick and a team of dozens of other researchers have further pieced together the story of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. The best clues to what happened now lie buried in rock layers stacked 12 miles deep. ![]() Lizards, snakes, mammals and more suffered their own setbacks. The catastrophe not only decimated the dinosaurs, leaving only birds to carry their legacy, but also annihilated various forms of life from flying reptiles called pterosaurs to coil-shelled nautilus relatives called ammonites. The asteroid strike triggered the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, mass extinction. The immense Chicxulub crater is a remnant of one of the most consequential days in the history of life on Earth. ![]() ![]() Now, thanks to a new analysis of core samples taken from the crater’s inner ring of mountains, called a peak ring, geologists can create a detailed timeline of what happened on the day after impact. ![]() The buried crater, over 90 miles in diameter, was created when a massive asteroid struck the planet 66 million years ago and brought a calamitous end to the reign of dinosaurs. One of the greatest scars on our planet is hidden beneath the Yucatán Peninsula and the Gulf of Mexico. ![]()
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