#asteroid-impact

#asteroid-impact

Dinosaurs would not have become extinct had it not been for a catastrophic asteroid strike, researchers have said, challenging the idea the animals were already in decline. About 66m years ago, during the late Cretaceous period, a huge space rock crashed into Earth, triggering a mass extinction that wiped out all dinosaurs except birds. However, some experts have argued the dinosaurs were already in decline.

Herds of hadrosaurs with huge head crests and duck bills roamed ancient New Mexico for plants to eat, making sure not to end up underfoot a long-necked titanosaur or, worse, in the jaws of a Tyrannosaurus rex. None of them knew that a seven-mile-long space rock hurtling toward Earth was about to kill them all. The asteroid impact triggered one of the planet's worst mass-extinction events, wiping out all dinosaurs but birds.

Using the latest NASA data, physicists from the Olin College of Engineering found that there are 22,800 near-earth objects (NEOs) measuring 140 metres or larger. Assuming that an impact will kill one in 1,000 people, your odds of dying in a collision with a space rock are one in 156,000.