Scientific experts have been divided on this one question for so many decades: how exactly did the dinosaurs become extinct? A recent study may have just answered this for good.

Scientists have more or less slowly saturated into one of two possible answers as to why the dinosaurs became extinct: either they were wiped out by volcanic activity lasting for 1.5 million years in the region where India is now, or that an asteroid hit the Earth, causing a massive shift in the ecosystem which the dinosaurs did not survive.

A recent study by 41 scientists suggests that the latter is the only plausible explanation. The study, which reviewed approximately 20 years’ worth of evidence and data, have come to the conclusion that the ‘hellish environment’ 65 million years ago that killed off not just the dinosaurs, but also half of the species on the planet, could only have been caused by a massive asteroid hit.

“We now have great confidence that an asteroid was the cause of the KT extinction,” shared Joanna Morgan from Imperial College London. “This triggered large-scale fires, earthquakes measuring more than 10 on the Richter scale, and continental landslides, which created tsunamis.” Morgan then shared that the dinosaurs would have then been driven to extinction when blast material from the impact was launched into the atmosphere, plunging the Earth into total darkness, and cooling the Earth into a global winter.

The study denounces the volcano theory, saying that only an asteroid impact would have released enough materials in such a short time required to shift the environment as quickly as it did.

For a simulation by the study team of an asteroid impact effect, please visit this site.

Image source: Don Davis / NASA

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