Want to meet a real live dinosaur? Kit Prendergast
explains that nothing could be simpler?
pproximately 66 million years
ago, Earth underwent a catastro-
phic mass extinction, known as the
K-T (Cretaceous-Tertiary) Extinction,
the trigger for this event being a
massive, 10km-wide meteorite that
slammed into our planet at Chicxulub
in Mexico. This theory was first
proposed by physicist Walter Alvarez
A rather conventional-looking dino-
saur—and a much more modern one!
Images by metha1819 and
KAWEESTUDIO.
and his geologist son Luis, based on
evidence of iridium in the earth’s
crust and the discovery of the impact
crater which spans some 118km in
diameter. The collision of this
meteorite released an amount of
energy equivalent to 100 trillion tons
of TNT or several nuclear bombs,
causing a global heat-wave pulse,
widespread fires, earthquakes and
tsunamis, and precipitating volcanic
eruptions; in short, hell-on-Earth
ensued! Debris was blasted into the
atmosphere, blocking out the sun and
causing the climate to swing from
extremely hot to being plunged into
the depths of a nuclear winter. Plants
were largely prevented from photo-