What Happened on Earth Right After the Dinosaurs Died?
How life on Earth persisted and blossomed after an asteroid wiped out almost all life on it?
The 180-million-year-long reign of the dinosaurs abruptly came to an end 66 million years ago when a large asteroid crashed into Earth. According to Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Walter Alvarez and his geologist son Walter, the collision was responsible for the formation of a historic layer of iridium-rich clay.
The asteroid caused instantaneous destruction in the immediate vicinity of the crash, while the secondary effects of its impact resulted in the mass extinction at the end of the Mesozoic Era.
It took life on Earth at least 30,000 years to bounce back from the destruction from the collision, especially because the asteroid had melted the crust and mantle at the point of impact. This was why scientists suspected that life would have had the most challenging time recovering at that particular location.
Surprisingly enough, however, even at ground zero, life bounced back rather quickly, and closely matched the resurgence of life around the rest of the planet. Within 300,000 years, productive ecosystems had begun to form across the globe, and another 10 million years later, evolution filled almost all the empty…
