The source of the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago remains a mystery, a new study finds.
Some researchers had thought the deadly asteroid was a piece of a larger space rock called Baptistina. Baptistina broke apart after a massive in-space collision about 160 million years ago, the theory went, spawning a swarm of mountain-size chunks of rock. One of those eventually slammed into Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and many other species.
Scientists are confident that a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer asteroid) is indeed what wiped out the dinosaurs. But new observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) space telescope suggest the space rock didn't come from Baptistina.
The timing just isn't right, according to the new study.
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