Author: Laurel Hamers / Source: Science News
After a giant asteroid hit Earth about 66 million years ago, the planet’s climate went on a roller coaster ride.
The space rock’s impact set off tsunamis and wildfires before climate-chilling clouds of sulfur gas engulfed the planet for decades, wiping out most life (SN: 11/25/17, p. 14). As these clouds dissipated, billions of tons of carbon dioxide, which spewed into the atmosphere when the asteroid hit, fueled roughly 100,000 years of global warming, new data suggest. Analyzing fossilized fish bits hints that the influx of the greenhouse gas raised the temperature of the ocean on average by 5 degrees Celsius, scientists report online May 24 in Science.
It’s not surprising that the climate heated up after the collision, which left a 200-kilometer-wide crater centered around what’s now Chicxulub, Mexico, says Johan Vellekoop, a geologist at KU Leuven in Belgium. But finding evidence to back up the warming claim has been challenging.
A common way to estimate past temperatures on Earth is to measure the proportion of heavier to lighter forms of oxygen in the carbonate shells left behind by dead invertebrates. Animals…
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