The space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was a rare strike from an asteroid beyond Jupiter, a new study details. The finding pins down the nature of the fateful space rock and its origin within our solar system, and may benefit technology that forecasts asteroid strikes on our planet.
Most scientists agree that the Chicxulub impactor — named after the community in modern-day Mexico near the 90-mile-wide (145 kilometers) crater carved by the rock — came from within our solar system. But its precise origins remain unclear, due to a lack of clear chemical evidence that wasn’t contaminated by Earth’s own material. Now, in remnants of the impactor collected from European regions of our planet’s crust, scientists have found the chemical composition of a rare element called ruthenium to be similar to that within asteroids hovering between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
The element is a “genetic fingerprint” of rocks in the main asteroid belt, where the fateful city-size rock was parked before it struck Earth 66 million years ago, Mario Fischer-Gödde, a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Cologne in Germany who led the new study, told Live Science. The asteroid was likely nudged toward Earth either by collisions with other space rocks or by influences in the outer solar system, where gas giants like Jupiter harbor immense tidal forces capable of disturbing otherwise stable asteroid orbits.
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