Dino Death

Dinosaurs didn't have a chance: When it came to asteroids, they had a one-two punch.


They went extinct 65 million years ago by at least 2 meteorite impacts. Scientists had identified know where the crater left by the first one is: on the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Now they think they've found evidence of the second one in the Ukraine, in the form of the Boltysh Crater.. In fact, those giant lizards may have been pelted by a SHOWER of meteorites!

When the Chicxulub Crater in the Gulf of Mexico was first discovered in 1980, establishment scientists (as usual) scoffed at the idea that an impact could have killed off the dinosaurs. But scientists who investigated the crater found remains of polling and spores of fossil plants embedded in the mud, meaning that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly covered the now barren landscape. Ferns have a amazing ability to recover after a catastrophe and so are good indications of past impact events.

They found a second group of fern fossils in a separate layer several feet above the first one, meaning that there were at least two impacts. The Ukraine crater was discovered in 2002. Scientists think that these two impact happened several thousand years apart, giving the dinosaurs no chance to recover from the first one. In BBC News, Howard Falcon- Lang quotes researcher Simon Kelley as saying, "We interpret this second layer as the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact. It is quite possible that in the future we will find evidence for more impact events."

Or the disaster could have been caused by space rocks hitting with EACH OTHER, sending their fragments racing down to the Earth below. Something of this sort (in this case a super-nova, or exploding star) caused a human extinction in part of North America in the past (NOTE: Subscribers can still listen to this show). In BBC News, Falcon-Lang quotes meteorite expert Monica Grady as saying, "One possibility might be the collision of Near Earth Objects."