Word: chicxulub
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...NASA scientists have another explanation. In a newly published report they note that the Yucatan rock around Chicxulub contains abundant amounts of sulfur. The blast must have vaporized the sulfur, they say, and spewed more than 100 billion tons of it into the atmosphere, where it mixed with moisture to form tiny drops of sulfuric acid. These drops created a barrier that could have reflected enough sunlight back into space to drop temperatures to near freezing, and could have remained airborne for decades. "It could have been up to a century," says Kevin Baines, an atmostpheric scientist at NASA...
...there evidence of ancient volcanic activity at the antipode of Chicxulub? Early speculation centered on the Deccan Traps, a basaltic plateau covering much of India that was formed over a few million years roughly around the time of the impact. But scientists have virtually eliminated that possibility. Taking continental drift into account, they estimate that what is now India was 1,000 miles or more away from where the Chicxulub antipode was 65 million years ago. And the location antipodal to the Deccan Traps at the time of their formation is now on the floor of the eastern Pacific Ocean...
...after a decade-long search, the attention of geologists is riveted on a circular basin some 180 km (112 miles) in diameter. It lies buried under 1,100 m (3,600 ft.) of limestone, centered beneath the town of Chicxulub, on the northern tip of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, and extending out under the Gulf of Mexico. The nature of the basin, its location and a preliminary estimate of its age suggest that it is the Crater, the one gouged into the earth by the comet or asteroid that killed the dinosaurs...
...evidence mounts, more researchers are convinced that the Chicxulub crater marks the impact point of the killer comet. Says Boynton: "This is nearly as close to a certainty as one can get in science." Some scientists disagree. David Archibald, a biologist at San Diego State University, believes the extinctions took place more gradually and in a complex pattern. "There is zero evidence that dinosaurs became extinct virtually overnight...
...Shoemaker points to a well-known crater, 35 km (22 miles) across, that lies partly buried near Manson, Iowa. Its age, established by radioactive dating: 65 million years. / Shoemaker believes the new findings will help persuade more scientists to "get off the fence" and side with the Alvarez theory. "Chicxulub is the smoking cannon," he says, "and Manson is the smoking pistol...