About 66 million years ago, a massive asteroid impact wiped out the dinosaurs and countless other living things. Not only that, there was also a period of darkness on Planet Earth for two years which caused severe consequences.
According to new research from the California Academy of Sciences, soot from forest fires filled the atmosphere and blocked sunlight after the asteroid impact.
The massive asteroid hit what is now the Gulf of Mexico, estimated to have wiped out about 75% of life on Earth at that time.
As quoted by us from the Daily Mail, the resulting cloud of darkness may continue to exist for 2 years, leaving a large part of the Earth in a state of complete darkness. That is what also makes it difficult for animals and plants to survive.
Life in the area around the impact was instantly wiped out, but the darkness also had a huge impact as it lasted for a long time. Because the sunlight is blocked by darkness, the process of photosynthesis in plants fails. That's what makes the ecosystem collapse.
Actually, this theory has been put forward for quite a long time, but has been further strengthened by recent research. "The general idea these days is that global forest fires are the main source of soot in the atmosphere," said Peter Roopnarine, lead author of the study.
"Soot concentrations over several days and weeks of wildfires will be high enough to reduce the amount of sunlight coming to a level low enough to prevent photosynthesis," he said.
Ecosystems on Earth might still be able to survive if the darkness only lasted for about 150 days. But more than that, many creatures are unable to survive so that it ends in mass extinction.
