The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs: The Final Day on Earth

On a spring day 66 million years ago, a paddlefish in a North Dakota river breathed in tiny beads of glass falling from the sky. They had been made less than an hour earlier, 3,000 km away, when an asteroid wider than Mount Everest is tall hit the Yucatán. This is that day, minute by minute, then year by year: the crater that formed in ten minutes, the fire and the wave, the long dark winter, who survived and why, the volcanoes on trial, and how forty years of clues led scientists back to ground zero. Earth Ages tells the story of the planet under your feet, one chapter at a time, using real reconstructions of the ancient Earth. CHAPTERS 0:00 A fish, 66 million years ago 1:06 Where this story goes 1:45 Chapter 1: The last day of the Cretaceous 3:20 The asteroid 4:31 Chapter 2: The first ten minutes 5:48 The mountain that fell 7:13 Chapter 3: The first hours 8:30 The wave 9:32 Tanis 11:08 Chapter 4: The long night 13:10 The ocean 14:12 Chapter 5: Who survived 15:47 The recovery 17:00 Chapter 6: The other suspect, the Deccan Traps 18:52 How we know 20:14 Finding the crater 21:59 You can still see it 23:25 Chicxulub on the Deep Time Clock SOURCES • Morgan et al. (2022), Nature Reviews Earth & Environment: the Chicxulub impact and its environmental consequences • Collins et al. (2020), Nature Communications: a steeply-inclined trajectory for the Chicxulub impact • Fischer-Gödde et al. (2024), Science: the Chicxulub impactor was a carbonaceous-type asteroid • Morgan et al. (2016), Science: the formation of peak rings in large impact craters • Gulick et al. (2019), PNAS: the first day of the Cenozoic • Artemieva et al. (2017), Geophysical Research Letters: climate-active gases released by Chicxulub • Robertson et al. (2004), GSA Bulletin; Robertson et al. (2013), JGR; Belcher et al. (2015), J. Geol. Soc.: the heat-pulse debate • Range et al. (2022), AGU Advances: the Chicxulub impact produced a powerful global tsunami • DePalma et al. (2019), PNAS: a seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary (Tanis) • During et al. (2022), Nature: the Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring • Senel et al. (2023), Nature Geoscience: impact winter sustained by fine silicate dust • Bardeen et al. (2017), PNAS; Brugger, Feulner & Petri (2017), GRL: soot and cold after the impact • Henehan et al. (2019), PNAS: rapid ocean acidification after the impact • Sheehan & Fastovsky (1992), Geology; Wilf & Johnson (2004), Paleobiology; Vajda et al. (2001), Science: who survived on land • Field et al. (2018), Current Biology; Longrich et al. (2016), J. Evol. Biol.: birds and mammals across the boundary • Lowery et al. (2018), Nature; Lyson et al. (2019), Science: the recovery • Schoene et al. (2019) and Sprain et al. (2019), Science; Hull et al. (2020), Science: the Deccan Traps and the impact • Alvarez et al. (1980), Science; Bohor et al. (1984), Science; Izett (1991), JGR: iridium, shocked quartz and impact glass • Hildebrand et al. (1991), Geology; Swisher et al. (1992), Science; Renne et al. (2013), Science: finding and dating the crater • Morgan, Gulick et al. (2017), Proceedings of the IODP volume 364; Goderis et al. (2021), Science Advances • Scotese & Wright (2018), PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs, Zenodo CREDITS Paleogeography: PALEOMAP PaleoDEMs, C.R. Scotese & N.M. Wright (2018), CC BY 4.0 Photos: • Impact spherules, Gorgonilla Island: Hermann Bermúdez, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Hell Creek Formation badlands: Joseph H. Hartman, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons • Deccan Traps: Shyamal L., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons • K–T boundary clay, Colorado: James St. John, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Shocked quartz: Martin Schmieder, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Yucatán shaded relief (PIA03379): NASA/JPL-Caltech • Cenote Zací: Bernard Dupont, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Bottaccione Gorge: Picenus, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons • Stevns Klint: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons • K–T boundary, Trinidad Lake State Park: Nationalparks, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons • Drumheller badlands: Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Animation, graphics and music: original, made for Earth Ages. Impact, crater, tsunami and climate visuals are illustrations based on published models. Narration: an AI voice (Google Gemini text-to-speech) reading an original script written and fact-checked for this channel. Made by a civil engineer. #Chicxulub #Dinosaurs #EarthHistory 🌍 Earth Ages: the 4.5-billion-year story of our planet, told in order. Subscribe for new episodes every two days:    / @earthageshistory   #EarthHistory #GeologicTime #EarthAges