The Chicxulub Crater

Over time, other scientists began finding iridium evidence at many different locations around the world that supported the Alvarez theory. In 1991, an immense meteor crater, about 110 miles in diameter, was discovered on the the Yucatán Peninsula. The crater even extended to the Gulf of Mexico. The Chicxulub Crater, as it was called, was named after a nearby village. Scientists believe the meteor that formed this massive crater was around 6 miles in diameter. It is also believed that it struck the earth at 40,000 miles per hour and released 2 million times more energy than the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated. This great impact would have caused so much heat that would have boiled the earth’s surface. The scorching temperatures would have caused wildfires throughout the globe and the Earth would turn into complete darkness because debris would have filled the sky. It is believed that mile-high tsunamis could have the momentum to cover the continents, which would drown multiple species of life. Massive shock waves would even have the power to trigger earthquakes and volcanic eruptions all over the planet.

The darkness of the Earth, caused by debris, could have lasted for many months, and possibly lasted for many years.

Eventually, the darkness would have dropped the Earth’s temperatures into the freezing zone. The freezing zone would have killed plants everywhere, which would leave herbivores without food. The results of this gigantic collision would have caused many dinosaurs to die within a matter of weeks. Carnivores who spent their life feasting on the herbivores would die a month or two later once the herbivores had died off. Ultimately, the loss of biodiversity would have caused monumental suffering, leading to death and extinction. It was only the small mammals that could live and search in the ground that would have survived as they ate from whatever was left on the

Earth.
Although there are people who are still hesitant to believe the Alvarez theory, there are multiple factors, which can likely sway the opinion of those who doubt. First and foremost, the impact crater off the Yucatan peninsula. Scientists believe that the meteor was traveling 150 times faster than a jet airliner. It is also believed that the collision occurred about 65 million years ago, which is when dinosaurs went extinct.
Iridium is another important piece of evidence that could lead people to believe this theory. Iridium is a metal, which is known to be extremely rare on the surface of the Earth and it is more common in asteroids and in molten rock found deep inside of Earth. Additionally, multiple scientists have discovered that the levels of iridium is 30 times greater than average in the layer of sedimentary rock of the Cretaceous Tertiary, or KT, boundary when dinosaur extinction happened. There are also pieces of once-molten rock, called impact ejecta. The impact ejecta shows evidence of an explosion strong enough to instantaneously melt bedrock and thrust it more than a hundred miles from the initial imapct. Impact ejecta could range in size from bulky chunks to tiny beads. Similar to iridium, impact ejecta is common at or near the KT boundary.
There are cystals, called "shocked quartz," which can show a distinctive pattern of breaking caused by high-energy collisions or eruptions. There are some scientists who continue to believe that the fracture pattern in these shock quartz could be only caused by a colossal asteroid or comet impact. These patterns are numerous in quartz found at or near the geological layer at the time of the extinction.
However, there are some paleontologists who have seen evidence in the fossil records which show dinosaurs were doing fine preceding the end of the Cretaceous period. These scientists believe dinosaurs were not declining in when the impact occurred. Some believe in a more gradual extinction of dinosaurs rejecting the theory that a catastrophic disaster caused the sudden extinction of dinosaurs.