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the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs created a “primordial soup” of new life

June 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Approximately 66 million years ago, a huge asteroid, 10 kilometers wide, fell on the Yucatan Peninsulain Mexico, causing such a violent impact that it wiped out three quarters of the plants and animals that then populated the Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs. This has been well known for a long time. However, now something else has just been discovered. And the impact occurred in the perfect place for the proliferation of a hydrothermal system that laid the conditions for the proliferation of underground life for 8 million years. It wiped out the dinosaurs and a large number of animals, but it left us with ideal conditions for many new microorganisms to thrive. Said in a colloquial and extremely summarized way: the chickens that come in are the ones that come out. 4 times longer than established. An international team of scientists has carried out a study that combines data from rock samples extracted from the crater left by the asteroid and computer models of the geological behavior of the impact. Thus, it has been concluded that, when this occurred, immense heat was generated, which melted the rocks that in turn met the also hot water of the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, a porous material filled with pockets of water was formed, very conducive to the proliferation of microbial life. In fact, these types of studies had been carried out previously. However, both computational and chemical analysis methods were less advanced, so the duration of the resulting hydrothermal system was underestimated. Initially it was thought that it could have lasted about 2 million years, but this study points to 4 times more. The key is in the feldspar. In 2016 took place Expedition 364, in which a team of scientists traveled to the Chicxulub crater200 kilometers in diameter, to study the trail left by that asteroid 66 million years ago. They took several rock samples, including a feldspar very rich in potassium. The formation of this type of feldspar rock is common in hydrothermal systems such as the one formed by the asteroid impact. Therefore, this rock was chosen to carry out the appropriate analyses. Over time, thanks to a technique known as argon-argon dating, it has been possible to see that this rock was forming in the crater from 66 million years ago, as expected, until 58 million years ago. Therefore, it was 8 million years of hydrothermal system. Techniques advance. These impacts are extremely rare, but it is even rarer for them to result in such long-lasting hydrothermal systems. There is no known one so extensive caused by an impact, in fact. Therefore, thanks to advances in computer modeling techniques, it has been analyzed which conditions at the impact site favored this phenomenon. Combining data from Expedition 364 drilling with geological data extracted from previous modeling, it was concluded that there were three key factors: the high permeability of the rock, the sustained heat of the impact and the natural geothermal conditions of the site. Very interesting applications. Understanding this is very useful for two reasons. On the one hand, because it gives us information about the formation of life on the early Earth. And, on the other hand, because it also helps us understand how this would originate on other planets, where these types of collisions are much more common. Searching for life in space is like looking for a needle in a haystack. We all agree that it is necessary to narrow the search area. Initially it was thought that it should mostly be searched for planets that are within their habitable zone. That is, at a suitable distance from its star so that there can be liquid water. But today we know that there are other factors, like the absence of nearby black holeswhich may be relevant. Now, we also know which craters are the perfect places to start looking. All thanks to the asteroid that so long ago wiped out the dinosaurs. Image | Magnificent In Xataka | Now you can find out which dinosaurs were your neighbors thanks to this fun interactive map

We thought dinosaurs were on the verge of extinction before the meteorite. we were wrong

October 27, 2025 by usatoday24

The most emblematic mass extinction in Earth’s history without a doubt occurred up to 66 million years ago. It marked the end of an era like the Cretaceousand with it, the disappearance of dinosaurs that were not birds. But what was that extinction really like? This is the big question that experts have asked themselves and that it is already beginning to have light. For decades the scientific community has debated whether dinosaurs were already in decline before they abruptly went extinct or whether they were wiped out while they were still thriving. This is where the new has had an impact published study in the magazine Science in which the Spanish researcher Jorge García-Girón from the University of León participates, who sheds light on this debate. Simply put, the research refutes the idea of a prolonged decline and suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and divided into distinct ecological regions just before the asteroid impact. The fossils of the south. Much of the uncertainty about this issue comes from a bias in the fossil record. The only well-dated faunas that span the extinction boundary come from northern North America (in the famous Hell Creek Formation). This made it impossible to know whether the extinction pattern observed there was a global or local phenomenon. In this case, the research team focused on a fossil-rich unit much further south, in the San Juan basin of New Mexico, known as the Member Naashoibito. The age of this formation has been a matter of controversy for years and was often considered much older. But now by applying geochronology techniques with Argon dating and magnetostratiography, the study has finally achieved precise dating. The results are conclusive: the Naashoibito Member dates back to the latest Cretaceous, which corresponds to up to 66 million years. This means that the fossils found there, which include a variety of species, preserve some of the last known non-avian dinosaurs. They lived a maximum of 340,000 years before the asteroid impact and were contemporaries of the Hell Creek fauna. Separated by weather. This finding is crucial because, for the first time, it allows us to compare two different faunas from the same end of the Cretaceous. And the result refutes the idea that we had all about decline in our minds. And the study not only dates the fossils, but also uses powerful ecological models to analyze the diversity of terrestrial vertebrates throughout North America. The results show that, far from forming a homogeneous and cosmopolitan fauna, the dinosaurs maintained high diversity and clear endemism until the end. In other words, it can be said that the dinosaurs were “strong” and divided into distinct regional assemblages. In this case, the study identifies two clear bioprovinces in the north and south that remained stable during the late Cretaceous. What separated these faunas? The analysis suggests that the main factor was temperature. More than a simple geographic division, different dinosaur communities were adapted to different climates. For example, the data propose that warmer southern regions may have been more tolerable for sauropods, while colder, more temperate northern regions were more suitable for hadrosaurines. The conclusion. The sum of the evidence points directly to the fact that non-avian dinosaurs were abruptly annihilated at the end of the Cretaceous. They were not in a decline as was thought, so they did not have this factor on top of them that would already condemn them to extinction if the disastrous event on Earth had passed. Instead, it has been seen that its ecosystem was diverse and biogeographically compartmentalized. Extinction in this way was sudden and, as the later fossil record demonstrates, was followed almost immediately by the rapid diversification and rise of mammals. Images | Vaibhav Pixels In Xataka | A museum kept bones for 20 years that they thought were rubble. Now we know that Mexico had its own T-Rex

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