Where did the object that caused the K Pg extinction event crash into Earth?

The impact site, known as the Chicxulub crater, is centred on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. 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 – the second-largest crater on the planet.

Is the KT Boundary found all over the world?

In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times …

What was the cause and what evidence exists of the KT mass extinction event?

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, or the K-T event, is the name given to the die-off of the dinosaurs and other species that took place some 65.5 million years ago. For many years, paleontologists believed this event was caused by climate and geological changes that interrupted the dinosaurs’ food supply.

What is the KT boundary and why is it important?

The K-T boundary separates the age of reptiles and the age of mammals, which was first recognized over one hundred years ago by geologists who realized that there was a dramatic change in the types of fossils deposited on either side of this boundary.

What caused the K Pg mass extinction?

As originally proposed in 1980 by a team of scientists led by Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, it is now generally thought that the K–Pg extinction was caused by the impact of a massive comet or asteroid 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) wide, 66 million years ago, which devastated the global environment, mainly through a …

When did the Chicxulub asteroid hit?

66 million years ago
The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (commonly known as the “K–Pg boundary”), slightly more than 66 million years ago, and a widely accepted theory is that worldwide climate disruption from the event was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass …

How did the K-T boundary get there?

Researchers now think that the asteroid strike that created the K-T boundary was probably the Chicxulub Crater. This is a massive impact crater buried under Chicxulub on the coast of Yucatan, Mexico. The crater measures 180 kilometers across, and occurred about 65 million years ago.

What caused the K pg event?

What evidence is there for a large impact which caused the K-T mass extinction?

The Chicxulub crater at the northwestern point of the Yucatán Peninsula was formed by the impact of an asteroid 66 million years ago. The cloud of dust and carbon gases that resulted is thought by some scientists to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Why was the element iridium important evidence for the K-T boundary work?

Iridium is rare on Earth because it sank down into the center of the planet as it formed, but iridium can still be found in large concentrations in asteroids. When they compared the concentrations of iridium in the K-T boundary, they found it matched the levels found in meteorites.