Dinosaur in the extinction of dinosaurs

2008/06/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Paleontologia
• Arkeologia

An international group discovers in the sediments of the time when the dinosaurs disappeared some granules of hydrocarbons (cenosfers) that are produced only by combustion of fossil fuels. This has made them think that one of the factors that could have destroyed the dinosaurs was a fuel fire that occurred at that time.

It is the most widespread and accepted idea that an asteroid that hit the Earth the dinosaur removed them. But the simple shock of the asteroid could not kill the dinosaurs, but there was some other phenomenon. So far, several groups of researchers have proposed two options: that the heat that came out of the collision of the asteroid caused large forest fires, which caused a global warming; or that the soot that arose as a result of the fires covered the sunlight, which caused the death of plants fed by dinosaurs.

The group that has found the cenosphere offers a third opportunity. They consider that in the area affected by the asteroid (Chicxulube, Yucatan Peninsula) there was a large fossil fuel reserve (which remains today). The collision first caused the evaporation of fuels and subsequently the fire in the atmosphere. Thus, a large fireball was formed that expanded for hundreds of kilometers. This allowed to burn forests, heat the climate, or smoke to cover the solar fire.