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yucatan meteor impact delineated from space

evidence growing of second extinction linked to meteor impact

“ Evidence is mounting that 251 million years ago, long before the dinosaurs dominated the Earth, a meteor the size of Mount Everest smashed into what is now northern Australia, heaving rock halfway around the globe, triggering mass volcanic eruptions, and wiping out all but about ten percent of the species on the planet. The “Great Dying,” as it’s called, was by far the most cataclysmic extinction event in Earth’s history, yet scientists have been unable to finger a culprit as they have with the dinosaur extinction. A new paper published in Science, however, claims to identify the crater made by that meteor, and it builds upon an ongoing body of evidence by researchers at the University of Rochester and the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), that points the finger for the Great Dying squarely at the heavens.

“"This is very likely the impact site we’ve been looking for," says Robert Poreda, professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester. "For years we’ve been observing evidence that a meteor or comet hit the southern hemisphere 251 million years ago, and this structure matches everything we’ve been expecting."”

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yucatan meteor impact delineated from space

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