{"id":258272,"date":"2023-11-03T04:30:22","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T08:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/es\/?p=313162"},"modified":"2025-07-01T17:47:02","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T00:47:02","slug":"it-was-really-an-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/it-was-really-an-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs\/","title":{"rendered":"Was it really an asteroid that ended the dinosaurs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For many years, we have been taught in school, high school, and even in university that a large asteroid was the main culprit for the end of the dinosaur era<\/strong>. While the impact of this celestial body on our planet was highly significant in the near-total extinction of these beings, a new study could explain what truly wiped them out<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a recent article published by the scientific journal Nature Geoscience<\/a><\/strong>, researchers believe that, although several factors severely affected hundreds of dinosaur species, previous studies overlooked the role of another effect: the billions of tons of dust<\/strong> that could have been propelled into the air when the asteroid hit.<\/p>\n\n\n

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When an asteroid<\/a>, estimated to be between 10 and 15 kilometers wide, struck the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula in Mexico about 66 million years ago<\/strong>, its impact caused immense devastation, triggering forest fires, earthquakes, and megatsunamis. This, in turn, led to the collapse of the ecosystem<\/strong> that supported the flourishing of plants and creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Belgian researchers believe that the asteroid<\/a> caused a “global winter,”<\/strong> as it is thought that massive dark clouds of silicate and sulfur dust swirled in the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and causing the global surface temperature to drop as low as 15\u00b0C.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The plants would have struggled to survive due to the lack of light, leading herbivores to die of starvation<\/strong>, leaving carnivores without prey and causing a massive extinction of 75% of the species in the entire food chain<\/strong>. The research asserts that the amount of dust that choked the atmosphere would have been approximately 2,000 gigatons; that is, more than 11 times the weight of Mount Everest<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This new study demonstrates that the asteroid, although it had a strong initial impact, didn’t immediately wipe out the dinosaurs but slowly killed them over a few years<\/strong>. A much more painful and cruel ending than we might have imagined, undoubtedly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Did the impact of a large asteroid millions of years ago make the dinosaurs extinct? A new study sheds some light on this topic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9256,"featured_media":258275,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":1},"categories":[1015],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-258272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":316744,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258272\/revisions\/316744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258272"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=258272"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=258272"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=258272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}