Scientists have finally made major breakthrough in discovering where dinosaur-killing asteroid came from
I know what you're thinking, we already know that the asteroid which wiped out the dinosaurs came from space.
About 66 million years ago, the chunk of space rock about six miles in diameter slammed into the planet, creating a crater more than 10 times that size.
That impact would have squelched any creature unfortunate enough to be anywhere near it, but the real killer was the vast amount of material thrown into the atmosphere.
It helped obscure the light of the sun on our planet, killing off a great deal of plants and vegetation which relied upon sunlight for sustenance.
Advert
With fewer plants the herbivores started to starve out and the meat-eating dinosaurs that preyed on them also perished from a lack of other dinos to eat.
The asteroid came down and ended around 180 million years of dinosaurs being the dominant creatures on our planet, so it's understandable why the idea of it happening again scares us.
Imagine everything we've built and developed as a species getting wiped out by a giant space rock coming out of nowhere.
Fortunately, we've developed ways to spot these sorts of asteroids coming our way long before they hit us, and we've worked on ways to redirect them so they'll miss us.
As far as we know, the dinosaurs had no such technology, so it was something of a surprise in dino-world when that big rock came crashing down.
Now, a scientific breakthrough into the origin of the asteroid has been made which tells us more about where this planet killer comes from.
Speaking to AFP, University of Cologne geochemist Mario Fischer-Godde spoke about a study into the origins of that gargantuan asteroid.
He said: "Now we can, with all this knowledge... say that this asteroid initially formed beyond Jupiter."
There are two main groups of asteroids, C-type which form in the outer solar system and S-type which come from the inner solar system nearer to the sun.
By studying the geological deposits at Chicxulub, the crater formed when the asteroid hit Earth, experts were able to work out more about the origins of the thing and the consequences of its impact.
Most meteorites (which are chunks of rock from an asteroid) that land on this planet are S-type, so the one that wiped out the dinosaurs being from a different origin is quite special.
Naturally it's quite hard to imagine the dinosaurs being able to appreciate such a fact.
Joe Harker