Environment

Mass Extinction - Dinosaurs

New research which has been released captures a fossilised snapshot of the day nearly 66 million years ago when an asteroid smacked Earth, fire rained from the sky and the ground shook far worse than any modern earthquake.

It was the day that nearly all life on Earth went extinct, including the dinosaurs.

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota, US of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber.

Separately, University of Amsterdam's Jan Smit disclosed that he and his colleagues even found dinosaur footsteps from just before their demise. Smit said the footprints - one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex - is "definite proof that the dinosaurs were alive and kicking at the time of impact ... They were running around, chasing each other" when they were swamped.

The researchers said the inland tsunami points to a massive earthquake generated by the asteroid crash, somewhere between a magnitude 10 and 11.

For decades, the massive asteroid crash that caused the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula has been considered the likely cause of the mass extinction often called the "KT boundary" for the division between two geologic time periods.