The Dinosaur killer not only blocked out the sun, it burned the entire planet.
The Dinosaur killer not only blocked out the sun, it burned the entire planet.
Originally shared by David Brin
Wow, unpleasant to contemplate: “The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned. Preliminary modeling showed that the reentry of ejecta would have caused a global infrared (IR) pulse sufficient to ignite global fires within a few hours of the Chicxulub impact. This heat pulse and subsequent fires explain the terrestrial survival patterns in the earliest Paleocene, because all the surviving species were plausibly able to take shelter from heat and fire underground or in water.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrg.20018/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrg.20018/abstract
Originally shared by David Brin
Wow, unpleasant to contemplate: “The global debris layer created by the end-Cretaceous impact at Chicxulub contained enough soot to indicate that the entire terrestrial biosphere had burned. Preliminary modeling showed that the reentry of ejecta would have caused a global infrared (IR) pulse sufficient to ignite global fires within a few hours of the Chicxulub impact. This heat pulse and subsequent fires explain the terrestrial survival patterns in the earliest Paleocene, because all the surviving species were plausibly able to take shelter from heat and fire underground or in water.”
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrg.20018/abstract
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrg.20018/abstract
I loved the Radiolab segment about this.
ReplyDeleteLink for the radio lab piece?
ReplyDeleteYikes
ReplyDeleteHere's the Dinopocalypse part of the live Radiolab show:
ReplyDeleteRadiolab: Dinopocalypse!: http://youtu.be/ZYoqtBEzuiQ