A second asteroid hit Earth around the same time causing a "catastrophic" event.

The huge asteroid that hit Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was not alone, scientists have confirmed.

A second, smaller space rock smashed into the sea off the coast of West Africa creating a large crater during the same era.

It would have been a “catastrophic event”, the scientists say, causing a tsunami at least 800m high to tear across the Atlantic ocean.

Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University first found the Nadir crater in 2022, but a cloud of uncertainty hung over how it was really formed.

  • qprimedEnglish
    12·
    2 months ago

    wow! this must be the most “fuck you in particular” moment ever.

    • Fuck spez@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      3·
      2 months ago

      People have speculated that the culprit could have been a binary asteroid along with the Chicxulub impactor. Even if that wasn’t the case, it’s estimated that similarly-sized (~450 m) impacts occur every 50,000-100,000 years. That would mean there could have been many hundreds of such impacts in the 66 million years since Chicxulub, so not nearly as unlikely of a coincidence as it seems from reading the article – especially considering the million-year margin of uncertainty in dating this smaller crater.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nadir_crater