An asteroid impact that causes a major disaster is something that is very rare. But when it did, the consequences were dire. Here's an example of what happened millions of years ago:
Dinosaur Extinction
66 million years ago, a giant asteroid hit the waters near Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, causing a cataclysm that eventually wiped out the dinosaurs. Massive dust blocks the sun's rays, sending global air temperatures plummeting.
The asteroid impact also generated a powerful tsunami, which is expected to trigger waves as high as 1.5 kilometers that hit parts of North America, followed by a subsequent, smaller-scale tsunami. In a recent study, evidence of such a tsunami was found in buried sediments in the Louisiana region.
"It's good to actually have evidence of something that has been in theory for a very long time," said Sean Gullick, a geophysicist at the University of Texas about the research.
Scientists have spent decades finding evidence of the giant tsunami. In the latest research, researchers used seismic imaging devices commonly used by oil companies.
They scanned the ground in the depths of the ground, down to the layers at the time of the asteroid impact. We managed to find a kind of ripple that was already in the form of a fossil which was concluded as a trace of the tsunami, which came from the asteroid impact crater.
The tsunami was very high and intense. When it reaches the ground, the tsunami causes a large earthquake that causes damage to the surrounding area. Creatures in the oceans land on the ground and vice versa, resulting in millions of victims.
Moving so fast, the tsunami hit land, shattering tons of rock. Big trees, various types of fish and dinosaurs in the sea were carried by the tsunami waves and their fossils were stored deep in the land.
The disaster was terrible. It is indicated that the asteroid impact evaporated sulfur in the rocks, then formed sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and caused cooling of temperatures on a global scale.
It is estimated that at least 325 billion metric tons of sulfur was produced as a result of the asteroid impact, which in addition to being devastating, also caused climate change. The dinosaurs were finally unable to survive and became extinct.
Ancient Elephant Extinction
Around 13,000 years ago, giant animals such as mastodons and mammoths or ancient elephants, sabertooth tigers and ground sloths disappeared from Earth. Recent research suggests the theory that they were annihilated by the impact or asteroid may be true.
The theory of the extinction of these animals by asteroids first appeared in 2007 as the Younger Dyras Impact Hypothesis. An alien rock that hit Earth 12,800 years ago caused extreme cooling and caused 35 large animal species to become extinct.
At the same time, the human population is declining. The result of the collision also resulted in the emergence of large forest fires where the smoke blocked the sun so that the cold air lasted longer.
The climate change changed the condition of the Earth to be like in the ice age for 1,400 years. In a new study in the journal Nature, evidence of a meteor impact at that time was found in the high content of platinum, usually from asteroids or comets, in sediment cores in South Carolina.
"There have been other studies in recent years with similar data that almost universally support that a space collision or comet caused the Younger Dyras climate event," said Christopher Moore, an archaeologist at the University of South Carolina.
The evidence scattered in Europe, North America, Chile to South Africa made them believe this event had a global impact. Studies that took place some time previously said there was an asteroid collision in Greenland 12,800 years ago with global consequences.
According to Moore, asteroid collisions are not the only trigger for the extinction. "The collision contributed to the extinction, but was not the sole cause," said .
"Human hunting certainly plays a role, as does climate change. Some of the animals survived after the event, in some cases for centuries," he said.
Of course the theory has not been accepted by all scientists. But Moore believes that just as the extinction of the dinosaurs by asteroids has become widely accepted among scientists, the belief and evidence that mammoths and other animals died out in a similar way may eventually be fully supported.