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asteroids


Although great amounts of ash suggest that most of North and South America was devastated by fire from the impact, the longer-term environmental effects of the impact were ultimately more deadly to any life forms than the fire. Dust blocked sunlight from the earth's surface for many months. Burned sulfur from the impact site, water vapor and chlorine from the oceans, and nitrogen from the air combined to produce worldwide fallout of intensely acidic rain. Scientists postulate that darkness and acid rain caused plant growth to die. As a result, both the herbivorous dinosaurs, which were dependent on plants for food, as well as the carnivorous dinosaurs, which fed on the herbivores, died out. On the other hand, animals such as frogs, lizards, and small insect-eating turtles and mammals, which were dependent on organisms that fed on decaying plant material, were more likely to live. Their survival indicates that, in most areas, the surface of the earth did not freeze.
             How could a giant impact cause extinction?.
             Walter Alvarez has written a vivid personal account of one of the most important recent discoveries in geology and paleontology. In the mid-1970s, while investigating the geological origins of the Apennine Mountains in Italy, he discovered a layer of clay. This boundary marks the time when dinosaurs and many other organisms became extinct, so Alvarez and his collaborators began investigating the clay for clues as to what might have happened. They found that the clay contains an unusually high amount of iridium, more typical of asteroids and comets. This led to the hypothesis that an asteroid might have hit the earth 65 million years ago and caused the mass extinction, a hypothesis that has received considerable empirical support. .
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             The discovery of the centimeter-thick layer of clay at the boundary was also opportune. Alvarez found a thin layer of fossil-free clay between the last limestone bed and the first limestone bed.


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