Dinosaurs’ Painful Deaths After Asteroid Impact Described By Expert

A history expert provided a detailed account of the horrible deaths the dinosaurs went through seconds after Earth was hit by a massive asteroid 66 million years ago. Many of the large animals were boiled alive, crushed to death and pelted by molten rocks during the catastrophic event.

Near the end of the Cretaceous Period, an asteroid with a diameter of about 50 miles crashed in a region now known as the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The massive impact event created a 93-mile-wide crater with a depth of 12 miles.

The initial explosion from the asteroid caused a series of environmental effects that immediately killed off a large number of dinosaurs around the impact zone. In his recent article for the Daily Mail, journalist and history author Jonathan Mayo gave an in-depth look at the gruesome deaths some of the dinosaurs went through following the massive asteroid impact.

According to Mayo, just a few moments after impact, the massive explosion generated by the asteroid caused the temperature in the surrounding area to rise rapidly. This caused the water in the skin of the animals near the impact zone to boil and burst out as steam. Those that managed to avoid boiling to death were immediately incinerated by the intense heatwave from the blast.

After the asteroid hit the ground, it sent thousands of molten rock and debris known as tektites flying into the air. Many of these pelted the ground, puncturing the skin of both flying and land-based dinosaurs.

“Molten rock flung high into the air is cooling as it falls, creating small glass ‘bullets’ known as tektites,” Mayo stated in his article. “These puncture wings of the quetzalcoatluses, and one by one they start falling from the sky.”

“In Hell Creek, Montana, red-hot tektites thump into the dying Tyrannosaurus Rexes, burning holes in their skin,” he added.

In addition to the extreme heat and tektites, the asteroid impact also generated violent earthquakes in different areas. The falling rocks and trees caused by the powerful seismic activity crush the small dinosaurs as they were trying to flee.

These are only some of the events that contributed to the massive die-offs 66 million years ago. As scientific reports have shown, the impact event triggered extreme climate changes that led to a nuclear winter all over the planet, which wiped out over 70 percent of all life on Earth.