Asteroid that ended dinosaur age nearly punctured earth’s crust
Q. When did the asteroid that ended the age of dinosaurs hit earth?- Published on 22 Nov 16a. 65 million years ago
b. 67 million years ago
c. 69 million years ago
d. None of the above
ANSWER: 65 million years ago
Asteroid that ended the age of
dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have punctured the earth’s crust and caused the surface of the planet to behave like slow moving fluid, as per a new study
- Finding may reveal how such impact can reshape the face of the planet and generate new habitats for life
- Major craters sometimes possess rings of rocky hills on their centre known as peak rings
- Many of these rings exist on ET rocky bodies such as Earth and Venus and are tough to analyse
- To learn more about peak rings, scientists studied the Chicxulub crater in Mexico which measures more than 180 km across
- It is the only crater with the intact peak ring on earth
- Crater resulted from the crash of an object 10 km wide 65 million years ago believed to have ended the age of the dinosaurs
- The researchers discovered that granite likely was deeply buried for 500 million years
- Following the impact, the earth behaved like a slow moving fluid - the asteroid may also have impacted the thickness of the earth’s crust
- It would have opened up a hole in the crust almost 30 km deep and 80 to 100 km wide.
