Scientists have reevaluated the catastrophic impact of the Chicxulub asteroid that struck 66 million years ago, revising the estimated sulfur release and its effects on the Earth’s climate.
This new data suggests a milder impact winter, offering insights into how some species might have survived the drastic changes.
Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction
About 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid, known as the Chicxulub impactor, crashed into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Measuring between 10 and 15 kilometers in diameter, the asteroid created a colossal crater about 200 kilometers wide.
The impact triggered a series of catastrophic events, including rapid climate changes that ultimately led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and approximately 75% of all species on Earth. Scientists believe the primary cause of this mass extinction was an “impact winter.
This phenomenon occurred when enormous amounts of dust, soot, and sulfur were ejected into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight, plunging temperatures, and disrupting global photosynthesis. These effects persisted for years, even decades, severely impacting ecosystems.
Reevaluating the Impact’s Aftermath
In the past, researchers largely attributed the global cooling and extinction to the sulfur released during the impact. However, estimates of the amount of sulfur-bearing aerosols released into the atmosphere have varied widely — by as much as two orders of magnitude — across different studies. This uncertainty stems from several factors, including variations in the composition of the impacted rocks, the asteroid’s size, speed, and angle of impact, as well as the pressures generated during the collision that influenced how sulfur-bearing minerals vaporized.
In the new study, Katarina Rodiouchkina and colleagues used sulfur concentrations and isotopic compositions from new drill cores of impact rocks within the crater region, combined with detailed chemical profiles across K-Pg boundary sediments around the world. This way, the authors were able to empirically estimate, for the first time, the total amount of sulfur released into the atmosphere due to the Chicxulub asteroid impact event.
New Insights into Sulfur’s Role
“Instead of focusing on the impact event itself, we focused on the aftermath of the impact,” explains chemist Katerina Rodiouchkina. “We first analyzed the sulfur fingerprint of the rocks within the crater region that were the source of sulfate aerosols released into the atmosphere. These sulfate aerosols were distributed globally and were eventually deposited from the atmosphere back onto the Earth’s surface in the months to years after impact. The sulfur was deposited around the K-Pg boundary layer in sedimentary profiles all over the world. We used the corresponding change in the isotopic composition of sulfur to distinguish impact-related sulfur from natural sources and the total amount of sulfur released was calculated through mass balance.”
Revising the “Impact Winter” Scenario
The scientists revealed that a total of 67 (± 39) billion tons of sulfur were released, approximately five times less than previously estimated in numerical models. This suggests a milder “impact winter” than previously believed, leading to a less severe temperature decline and faster climate recovery, which could have contributed to the survival of at least 25% of species on Earth following the event. While sulfur remains the primary driver of global cooling, it is important to note that a recent study by the Royal Observatory of Belgium and VUB suggests a massive plume of micrometer-sized fine dust may have played a crucial role in creating a two-year-long dark period, blocking photosynthesis and further compounding the environmental impacts.
Reference: “Reduced contribution of sulfur to the mass extinction associated with the Chicxulub impact event” by Katerina Rodiouchkina, Steven Goderis, Cem Berk Senel, Pim Kaskes, Özgür Karatekin, Michael Ernst Böttcher, Ilia Rodushkin, Johan Vellekoop, Philippe Claeys and Frank Vanhaecke, 16 January 2025, Nature Communications.
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-55145-6
The study was a collaboration between Luleå University of Technology, Ghent University (UGent), Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Royal Observatory of Belgium (ROB), Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Leibniz-Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), University of Greifswald, University of Rostock, Australian Laboratory Services (ALS) Scandinavia AB, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven), and the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS). This research was supported by the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) through the EOS-Excellence of Science program (project ET-HoME) and Hercules funding for the acquisition of a multi-collector ICP-mass spectrometer at UGent, VUB Strategic Research Program, Chicxulub BRAIN-be (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks) and the FED-tWIN project MicroPAST both through the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO).
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7 Comments
The incident of the impact of asteroids on the earth is the same as reality, but in this incident, the collision of the Milky Way objects with the Sun and the disintegration of the disintegrated elements of the stars and planets of the Milky Way on the entire surface of the solar objects did not only destroy the dinosaurs, but also the humans who lived in the Philippine Islands tens of millions of years ago. They created Papua and Malaysia in the form of a dinosaur, the life of those people was also destroyed, but the life of some aquatic animals remained underwater under the ice of the Antarctic and from the same creatures, our human life was created
“The impact triggered a series of catastrophic events, including rapid climate changes that ultimately led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and approximately 75% of all species on Earth.”
67 (± 39) or 67 (± 58 %) or a range of 28 to 106 is a fairly large range that “5X” doesn’t represent well. It could be between 2X and 8X. The bottom line is that the Impact Winter was long enough that those surviving the initial impact, and didn’t burn up in the subsequent fires, probably couldn’t survive even two months without food, let alone 2 years. So, the actual duration of the Impact Winter is unimportant to the extinction event once all the large herbivores starved. It could have gone on for 100 years with the result being the same.
What isn’t answered is why some of the smaller dinosaurs, which were direct competitors for ecological niches occupied by mammals, also died out, and why turtles, large reptiles, sharks, and fish survived.
This wasn’t intended as an omnibus study. However, other links within SciTechDaily are more focused on such questions, including one on “Deadly Dust”. Regardless of cold or warm blood, the atmosphere is surmised as too toxic for almost all air-breathing species.
The meteor shower from the stars and planets that came from the Milky Way continued for several years and this caused all the dinosaurs to be destroyed. Their cities were buried, but dinosaurs, their corpses, after the meteor shower stopped, the waves of the seas carried them to the shore and turned into fossils, but 98% of them were buried under the soil on the beaches and turned into oil.
Dinosaur could not compete with advance dinosaur the modern crocodilian or other name spinosauridae or mesoeucrocodylia it’s like that in other animal dinosaur is only animal were primitive animal is cliam to be advance over the real advance animal by some scientist some how this none sense has become popular because museum have to make money and dinosaur has a cool name. mistery sell the weapon of gator is well known they know what it can do .zoo need to challenge the museum they have real thing .all modern crocodilian are cold hardy they are native North Carolina were artic weather happen all the time cold subtropic like dinosaur time.feral gator live many year in pennyiviania extreme winter are no problem for modern crocodilian they are specialize cold night hunter there eyes glow like house cat they have same system they live in very cold night desert weather and mountain .as for turbinate not every dinosaur has it it’s advance feature in dinosaur it’s found in duck bill dinosaur ankylosaur sauropod triceratops type spinosaurus.the irritator baryonyx lack turbinate.of course the great dinosaur modern crocodilian has it they live in desert they need it so they do not over heated the turbinate is warm blooded feature that why spinosaurus is found in desert .bird have no links to dinosaur the spinosauridae is full form mesoeucrocodylia it has death roll system like modern crocodilian .spinosaurus is only tetanuran dinosaur with a turbinate a mammal and bird. Feature.they are no early mesoeucrocodylia alive now or early eusuchian .modern crocodilian also are pess the common caiman is well known for that .so spinosauridae live
Modern crocodilian is not like other reptile they can play in the snow and not shut down like that news report on YouTube.they do not need high heat of the day to hunt they are night hunter by the eyes the performance through history clearly is a dinosaur they have digitigrade legs the fossil kind extreme mammal feature a fast animal feature warm blooded feature today dinosaur the gator legs are like mammal advance quadrupedal feature even thou the gator is bipedal the chameleon lizard has it too but it’s more advance the chameleon it more like mammal the chameleon can stand like mammal and walk like mammal crocodilian are not only reptiles can do that.bird have simular arm like that for flight it’s convergent evolution feature so not only for walking .the chameleon very advance for a lizard I can not believe they have that even more advance than the gator the mammal walk the modern crocodilian or dinosaur are the top reptiles more simular to mammals there are no cold blooded feature only warm blooded feature .the gator has human ankle a bipedal feature the early mammal that alive today allso has it a quadrupedal animal they allso has furcula like birds it’s more advance than dinosaur it’s like today birds a tuatara like animal that do not have lizard skin they have human ankle more convergent evolution .the early mammal modern crocodilian chameleon mammal the gait is not link to primitive reptile the tuatara the tuatara is still alive .i suspect chameleon was advance reptile there finger are fuse like carnotaurus the dinosaur it won of reason why I think all theropod were quadrupedal all thou they were awful quadrupedal only one step was possible it’s still importand clearly could not move like today quadrupedal and probaly not use it all the time.the meteoroid did not kill million it was softy the tuatara is alive
The composition of the fireball that hit earth must have been so hot that it could have caused the earth to heat to a point that every living animal and plant could not have survived such a temperature change. Hitting earth and water at that could have heated the earth’s oceans to boiling as well as changed all weather patterns as indicated in scientific analysis of centuries past.