In a new study, the US team found the main trigger for the extinction may have been clouds of ash and soot particles that spread through the atmosphere. These clouds last up to two years, putting much of the earth in darkness and making it difficult for anything to grow or survive.
Quoted from Daily Mail, Friday (12/24/2021), life in the area around the collision would have been killed instantly, but there was more significant damage in the years following the collision.
READ: Astrophysicists predict the end of the earth will start with the extinction of the sun
These include tidal waves, floods and massive environmental changes, including the dispersal of tiny particles into the atmosphere that spread across the globe. While the earth is shrouded in darkness, plants also fail to grow due to lack of sunlight to carry out photosynthesis.
“This nuclear winter scenario, as first proposed in the 1980s, plays a major role in mass extinction , explained Peter Roopnarine, study author, to Live Science.
Roopnarine said the general thinking now was that global wildfires would be a major source of fine soot that would drift into the upper atmosphere.
“Soot concentrations in the first few days to weeks of fires are high enough to block sunlight to prevent photosynthesis,” he said.
The fossil record shows that about 73 percent of vertebrate species became extinct after the collision. Roopnarine said the impact of the darkness would be rapid, reaching a maximum in a few weeks.
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