Scientists say they have deposits formed hours after dino-killing impact New paper describes saltwater animals swept ashore by impact-driven floods. John Timmer - 4/2/2019, 12:31 PM A pile of fish trapped in the flood deposits. The Chicxulub impact is famed for having killed the dinosaurs and most other species alive on Earth at the time, and it left behind a thin layer of dust rich in rare elements. Modeling of the impact has suggested almost too many ways it could have killed: massive tsunamis, a magnitude 11 earthquake, global wildfires and searing heat, months of frigid darkness, acid rain, a massive surge of carbon dioxide, and more. While we've had confirmation that some of these events occurred, we don't have a strong sense of their impact because we haven't found fossils that tell us much about what happened to the ecosystems of the time. That may have changed, according to a report in PNAS. The paper describes a large deposit residing just under the iridium-rich dust that marks the impact, apparently formed while heavier debris was still falling from the sky. The site, in western North Dakota, contains a mix of fresh and saltwater species, and it seems to have formed when water rushed ashore from what was then a nearby ocean. ...https://arstechnica.com/science/201...osits-formed-hours-after-dino-killing-impact/ Neat, eh? A nice little glimpse into what one small part of the world was like at the moment of that fatal impact. It was also a very warm time when the ocean extended up to near the Canadian border because there was little to no polar ice.
Very cool. But I would expect there to be large deposits of dinosaur scat from moments after the impact as well.
