It's official: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs

A panel of 41 scientists from across the world reviewed 20 years' worth of research to

try to confirm the cause of the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction,

which created a "hellish environment" around 65 million years ago and wiped out more

than half of all species on the planet.

Scientific opinion was split over whether the extinction was caused by an asteroid or

by volcanic activity in the Deccan Traps in what is now India, where there were

a series of super volcanic eruptions that lasted around 1.5 million years.

The new study, conducted by scientists from Europe, the United States, Mexico,

Canada and Japan and published in the journal Science, found that a

15-kilometre (9 miles) wide asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub i

n what is now Mexico was the culprit.

"We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the

KT extinction. This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more

than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides,

which created tsunamis," said Joanna Morgan of Imperial College London,

a co-author of the review.

The asteroid is thought to have hit Earth with a force a billion times more powerful

than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.Morgan said the

"final nail in the coffin for the dinosaurs" came when blasted material flew

into the atmosphere, shrouding the planet in darkness, causing a global

winter and "killing off many species that couldn't adapt to this hellish environment."

Scientists working on the study analysed the work of palaeontologists,

geochemists, climate modellers, geophysicists and sedimentologists

who have been collecting evidence about the KT extinction over the last 20 years.

Geological records show the event that triggered the dinosaurs'

demise rapidly destroyed marine and land ecosystems,

they said, and the asteroid hit "is the only plausible explanation for this".

Peter Schulte of the University of Erlangen in Germany,

a lead author on the study, said fossil records clearly

show a mass extinction about 65.5 million years ago --

a time now known as the K-Pg boundary.

Despite evidence of active volcanism in India, marine and land ecosystems only

showed minor changes in the 500,000 years before the K-Pg boundary,

suggesting the extinction did not come earlier and was not prompted by eruptions.

The Deccan volcano theory is also thrown into doubt by models of

atmospheric chemistry, the team said, which show the asteroid impact

would have released much larger amounts of sulphur, dust and soot in a

much shorter time than the volcanic eruptions could have, causing extreme darkening and cooling.

Gareth Collins, another co-author from Imperial College, said the asteroid impact

created a "hellish day" that signalled the end of the 160-million-year reign

of the dinosaurs, but also turned out to be a great day for mammals.

"The KT extinction was a pivotal moment in Earth's history, which

ultimately paved the way for humans to become the dominant

species on Earth," he wrote in a commentary on the study.