Rainforest Animals List With Pictures, Facts & Links To Further Information, Plus FREE Printable Question Sheets, Are Whales Mammals? However, at around the same time as the Alvarez team were researching their theory, a geophysicist named Glen Penfield came across evidence of a huge crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The asteroid would have been travelling at around 20 kilometres (12.5 miles) per second, or 72,000 kilometres / 44,712 miles per hour. Estimated at six miles (9.7 kilometers) wide, it carved out a substantial amount of debris that spread quickly around the … Due to a lack of dinosaur fossils occurring in rocks formed after the Cretaceous period, palaeontologists realised that at the end of this period, the Earth had undergone a mass extinction event. The asteroid is thought to have been between 10 and 15 kilometres wide, but the velocity of its collision caused the creation of a much larger crater, 150 kilometres in diameter - … A teacher of over 15 years, mostly English but dabbled in outdoor pursuits and media. Question always crop up when we look at these readers and one of those questions is ”how big was the asteroid that killed all the dinosaurs”. On this site we aim to teach the theory and share our thoughts, but also go that one step further and give you access to the hard resources you need for your class or for you children. Well its hard to say, luckily the evidence of really big impacts is in our distant past, and we should be thankful for that! Official estimates are that the meteorite that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was approximately 10 to 15 Km across. Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was as powerful as 10 billion atomic bombs, new research finds "Not all the dinosaurs died that day, but many dinosaurs did." Believed to be nine miles wide, the asteroid caused a global tsunami, "the likes of which have not been seen in modern history," Range said in comments obtained by … The asteroid’s impact on Earth was quite catastrophic. I knew there was a difference but I had forgotten what they were. Debris from the explosion was thrown into the atmosphere, severely altering the climate, and leading to the extinction of roughly 3/4 of species that existed at that time, including the dinosaurs. Learn how your comment data is processed. The Chixculub asteroid was reckoned to be about 10 km wide. Nasa and other space agencies are constantly searching the skies for near earth objects that could hit Earth and they have gotten a lot better at it in recent times. But if that errant space rock was a whopper, it was a pipsqueak compared to an asteroid that scientists now say slammed into Earth 3.26 billion years ago. When I say ”we” I mean people, I had nothing to do with it!! by Making English Fun! Copyright © 2021 ActiveWild.com. The next question that follows on from how did the dinosaurs die and how big was the meteor that did it is ‘’are there any close to Earth or are there any that will hit Earth’. Active Wild Pinterest Active Wild Facebook. Just for an example that’s around the world 5 times in an hour…. The K–Pg boundary is a thin band of rock that occurs between Cretaceous and Paleogene rocks. The dinosaur-killing asteroid that hit the Earth around 66 million years ago probably generated a huge tsunami, according to new research. The bad news is it’s a big old sky and its difficult to spot something moving at 20000 km an hour its small, the good news if its big enough to see then we can probably see it! The meteor that is thought to have killed the dinosaurs, is estimated to be about 10 to 15 kilometers wide. The rocky object that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have been a comet, rather than an asteroid, scientists say. Post was not sent - check your email addresses! It was formed when a large asteroid or comet about 11 to 81 kilometers (6.8 to 50.3 miles) in diameter, known as the Chicxulub impactor, struck the Earth. Feel free to take a look at our resources, email us on info@makingenglishfun.com, or jump on the Facebook group to ask questions. The extinction of the dinosaurs was affected by the coincidence of many factors and this did not happen instantly. The massive asteroid that struck present-day Mexico 66 million years ago contributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs and 75% of life on Earth. Because of this, the Alvarez team suggested that around 65 million years ago Earth was struck by a large asteroid. For example only today (the day before the American election)  there have been reports that there will be a fridge sized asteroid (2018 VP₁ )that has a 0.5% chance of hitting either us or out atmosphere, and then in 2048 (2007 VK184 ) another larger one that may be on a course to shoot past us.