K-T Boundary

A thin dark line found in layers of sediment around the world,evidence that
something devastating happened to the planet 65 million years ago.This line is
known as the K-T boundary.What is the K-T boundary?K is actually the traditional
abbreviation for the Cretaceous period,and T is the abbreviation for the Tertiary
period.So the K-T boundary is the point in between the Cretaceous and Tertiary
periods.Geologists have dated this period to about 65.5 million years ago.When
physicist Luis Alvarez and geologist Walter Alvarez studied the K-T boundary
around the world,they found that it had a much higher concentration of iridium
than normal between 30-130 times the amount of iridium you would
expect.Iridium is rare on Earth because it sank down into the center of the planet
as it formed,but iridium can still be found in large concentrations in asteroids.
When they compared the concentrations of iridium in the K-T boundary,they
found it matched the levels found in meteorites.The researchers were even able
to estimate what kind of asteroid must have impacted the Earth 65.5 million years
ago to throw up such a consistent layer of debris around the entire planet.They
estimated that the impactor must have been about 10 km in diameter,and release
the energy equivalent of 100 trillion tons of TNT.When that asteroid struck the
Earth 65.5 million years ago,it destroyed a region thousands of kilometers
across,but also threw up a dust cloud that obscured sunlight for years.That
blocked photosynthesis in plants,the base of the food chain and eventually
starved out the dinosaurs.Researchers now think that the asteroid strike that
created the K-T boundary was probably the Chicxulub Crater.This is a massive
impact crater buried under Chicxulub on the coast of Yucatan,Mexico.The crater
measures 180 kilometers across,and occurred about 65 million years
ago.Geologists aren’t completely in agreement about the connection between the
Chicxulub impact and the extinction of the dinosaurs.Some believe that other
catastrophic events might have helped push the dinosaurs over the edge,such as
massive volcanism,or a series of impact events.