Chicxulub: The Impact That Changed Earth

About 66 million years ago, a large asteroid struck the region now occupied by Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. The Chicxulub impact left evidence in rocks and sediments and is associated with the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. Its consequences extended far beyond the immediate impact area. This short documentary follows the connection between a sudden collision and the environmental changes that disrupted life across the planet. Material thrown into the atmosphere, darkness and changes to food webs help explain why organisms far from the crater were also affected. Researchers test those processes using geological evidence and models. The loss is commonly described in terms of species, not a measured fraction of every individual organism alive at the time. Some lineages survived and later diversified. Keeping extinction and survival in the same account gives a more accurate picture than imagining that the impact eliminated all life or every kind of dinosaur descendant. Sources and further reading: Rocks at Asteroid Impact Site Record First Day of Dinosaur Extinction https://news.utexas.edu/2019/09/09/rocks-at-asteroid-impact-site-record-first-day-of-dinosaur-extinction/ Asteroid impact, not volcanoes, made the Earth uninhabitable for dinosaurs https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/jun/asteroid-impact-not-volcanoes-made-earth-uninhabitable-dinosaurs Plankton turned hunters to survive dinosaur-killing asteroid impact https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2020/oct/plankton-turned-hunters-survive-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-impact Asteroid impact grounded bird ancestors https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2018/05/asteroid-impact-grounded-bird-ancestors Rapid recovery of life at ground zero of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0163-6