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Chicxulub Crater Essay

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It is difficult to envision that one of the greatest impact craters on Earth that measures up to 180km wide and 900m deep could just vanish just from sight. There have been many different dinosaur extinction theories offered in the recent decades. These range from poisonous plants to mass suicide by dinosaur herds. Although one concept as to how the dinosaurs became extinct has gained a wide acceptance since the 1980’s, involving a major earth impact by a meteor or comet (Icr.org, 2014). This horrific catastrophic event is thought to have extinguished up to two thirds of all animal and plant species, leaving behind a large crater found in Chicxulub, Mexico (LiveScience.com, 2014).
The Chicxulub crater is located on Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula and evaded detection for decades because it was buried while at the same time being reserved beneath a kilometre of younger rocks and sediments. Most scientists now agree that the Chicxulub crater is evidence that a huge asteroid or comet crashed into the Earth's surface 65 million years ago causing the extinction of more than 70% of the living species on the planet, including the dinosaurs. This collision idea was first popularised in 1980 by Luis Alvarez and his son, Walter Alvarez, where they developed the Alvarez hypothesis. They were studying a one centimetre-thick layer in Italy, which …show more content…

Once in the air, the sulphur would have rapidly transformed into sulphuric acid, generating massive amounts of acid rain, causing all plants to die, leading to the herbivores dying of starvation and then not long after, the carnivores also being wiped out because of starvation (Dinosaurs, 2014). Evidence for this theory grows more definite over time although it is still a continuing scientific

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