The reason our planet lost the terrible lizards of eras long past may seem self-evident. About 66 million years ago, an asteroid came screaming out of the sky and smacked into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. The devastation that followed was unprecedented, with tsunamis, an overheated atmosphere, darkened skies, a terrible cold snap, and other apocalyptic ecological events clearing away an estimated seventy five percent of known life on Earth.
Paleontologists know this catastrophe as the K/Pg extinction event because it marks the transition from the Cretaceous into the Paleogene period of Earth's history. But even though it has been studied constantly, the details of this event still puzzle experts. The case wasn't closed with the recognition of the impact crater in the 1990s, and exactly how the extinction played out—what differentiated the living from the dead—continues to inspire paleontologists to dig into the cataclysm of the Cretaceous.
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