“Beyond our wildest dreams”: Scientists have discovered a fossil of a dinosaur that died the day the asteroid hit the asteroid

Scientists believe they discovered a fossilized time capsule from the exact day when the Earth turned from being green, A world full of dinosaurs To a scene of apocalyptic hell covered in soot. In the meantime, the capsule was a well-preserved leg of a dinosaur that scientists believe died out. spring dayabout 66 million years ago.

The discovery, which was made at the Tanis drilling site in North Dakota, will be discussed in more detail in a BBC documentary narrated by by David Attenborough titled Dinosaurs: the last dayA copy of the documentary will be broadcast On PBS in the US next month. While the results have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, scientists are very excited about the discovery and the potential for information it might contain.

“The time we can make on this site is beyond our wildest dreams… It shouldn’t really exist and it’s absolutely fantastic,” Philip Manning, professor of natural history at the University of Manchester, told BBC Radio 4’s Today according to BBC Radio 4: to the guard. “Never in my entire career have I ever dreamed of looking at something that is a) so time constrained; and b) so beautiful, it tells such a great story.”

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Manning described the leg as “the ultimate dinosaur racket”.

When Sir David looked at[the leg], he smiled and said, “This is an impossible fossil.” And I agreed,” Manning said.

Manning added that scientists also discovered the remains of fish that inhaled the debris from Chicxulub Crater, a 90-mile-wide impact site in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that is widely believed to be the point of origin for whatever caused the mass. extinction event. While there is scientific consensus on this Something Earth hit on that fateful day, there are various theories about what exactly – most believe it is either an asteroid or guilty.

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Scientists were able to date the discovery due to the presence of debris that rained down for a while immediately after the impact.

“We have so many details with this site that tell us what happened moment by moment, it’s like seeing it in the movies,” said Robert DiPalma, the University of Manchester graduate student who led the Tanis excavation. “You look at the rock pillar, you look at the fossils there, and it takes you back to that day.”

The additional fossilized remains that the scientists found were the remains of a turtle, the skin of a Triceratops, a pterosaur gene inside its egg, and possibly a fragment on the probe itself. according to to the New York TimesThe parts inside two of the balls, De Palma said, were “totally different”.

“They were not enriched with calcium and strontium as we would expect,” de Palma said. can They indicate that the collider was an asteroid. However, scientists won’t jump to conclusions until the samples have been thoroughly analyzed and published in peer-reviewed journals.

“That’s like a CSI dinosaur,” said de Palma. “Now, as a scientist, I wouldn’t say, ‘Yeah, 100 percent, we have an animal that died in overdrive,'” [but] “Is it compatible?” yes.”

The mass extinction event caused by the Chixclub effect led to the end of the Cretaceous period – and the end of the dinosaurs – paving the way for mammals, which were often small, rat-like creatures, to become one of the dominant large life forms on Earth. The extinction event killed nearly 75 percent of life on Earth, although some marine and burrowing animals, including early mammals, were better suited to waiting for the short wave of hot air Because of the influence that has spread all over the planet.

Although the exact date is unknown, it is remarkable how scientists were able to obtain clues to what happened on the day of the Great Extinction. At the same drilling site, DePalma’s team previously found samples of fish that appeared to have died on the day of the impact and whose bone structure suggests they were. Spring or early summer when the impact occurred.

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