Asteroid, which crashed into the ground 66 million years ago, causing mass extinction of 75 percent of all living creatures, including dinosaurs, formed far beyond the orbit of Jupiter – in remote corners of the solar system.
This conclusion was brought by an international group of researchers by studying the layer of land in the area of the crater Chiksulub (Chikshulub) in Mexico. According to scientists, we are talking about a rare asteroid of class C – a dark carbon object.
to identify the type of asteroid that put an end to the era of dinosaurs, helped samples at the site of the fall, in which scientists found traces of ruthenia.
Scientists have found that minerals found in the patterns of ruthenia have unique characteristics confirming their cosmic origin.
The leading author of the study is Dr. Cosmochemist from the University of Cologne Mario Fisher -Gedde explained that ruthenium is one of the rare elements on Earth, but it is 100 times more in the celestial bodies of the solar system.
The team under the leadership of Fisher-Gedde studied five samples taken from the earth’s layers formed during the period of chalk-paleogen extinction, also called the K-PG border.
Scientists have found that the ratio of seven stable isotopes of ruthenia is equally in all samples.
Researchers also analyzed samples of five shock structures that arose in Phaunerozoic (between 36 and 470 million years ago) and compared them with samples on the crater, which killed 75 percent of living creatures 66 million years ago.
At the same time, the theory was again confirmed that the body that gave rise to Chiksulub is not a cow’s core, but a C-type asteroid that formed in the external solar system.
The results of the study are published in the Science journal “American Association for the Promotion of Science Development” (AAAS).