In a new study published Thursday in the journal Science, researchers pieced together the chemical identity of the asteroid that fueled the planet’s fifth mass extinction event. The dino killer was a rare clay-rich mudball containing materials from the dawn of the solar system, the findings suggest.
While the Chicxulub asteroid landed tens of millions of years ago, learning about this ancient space rock is important because it’s “part of a bigger picture of understanding the dynamic nature of our Solar System,” said study coauthor Dr. Steven Goderis, a research professor of chemistry at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Laying out a theory for nonavian dinosaur extinction
Scientists hypothesized in 1980 that a collision with a giant space rock led to the death of the dinosaurs. Back then, the researchers didn’t find the asteroid itself; instead, they found a thin layer of the metal iridium in rocks around the world from 66 million years ago. Iridium is rare within the Earth’s crust but abundant in some asteroids and meteorites.
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