Meteorites supplied Earth life with phosphorus
...m and others, life could originate. It requires an asteroid belt where planetesimals can grow to a critical size around 500 kilometers in diameter and a mechanism to disrupt these bodies and deliver them to the inner solar system." Jupiter drives the delivery of planetesimals to our inner solar system, Lau...Origin of West Indian insect eater much older than previously thought
...s, and how they managed to survive the cataclysmic asteroid strike thought to have killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.As the theory goes, an asteroid, about 10 kilometers in diameter, struck somewhere in what is now the Yucatan peninsula, not far from where solenodon lives today. It...... where the fungi had taken over. Its known that an asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico at the end of ...d in ash and other debris. The consequences of the asteroid impact were global. Vajda and her colleagues have previously studied the broad-scale changes in the ...The Rosetta space probe's long trek to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko
...as good as a rest, and a meeting with at least one asteroid should help break the monotony for Rosetta. The spacecraft will come close to an asteroid at the end of 2008. Asteroids are, it will be remembered, rocky bodies, some as large as mountains, ...New evidence says Earths greatest extinction caused by ancient meteorite
...tions in asteroids, so they concluded that a giant asteroid had struck the Earth at that time, likely leading to the downfall of the dinosaurs. The Alvarez claims were at first largely dismissed, but the evidence grew and today it is accepted that their interpretation was largely correct. Basu added weight to...Ultra-low oxygen could have triggered die-offs, spurred bird breathing system
...Period 65 million years ago, when the impact of an asteroid is believed to have brought the demise of the dino...id not happen suddenly, as they would have with an asteroid impact. In addition, he said it is known which types of creatures, and which breathing systems, bes...Princeton paleontologist produces evidence for new theory on dinosaur extinction
...han the familiar and dominant theory that a single asteroid hit Earth 65 million years ago and caused the mass...eriod of volcanic eruptions as well as a series of asteroid impacts are likely to have stressed the world ecosystem to the breaking point. Although an asteroid ...Is this what killed the dinosaurs?
...ction of the dinosaurs thought to be caused by an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago was more likely ..., at this earlier time there is no evidence of any asteroid impact. Her findings are based on analysis of microfossil assemblages, which were found inside cores...Leatherback sea turtles careening towards extinction
...over 100 million years, through climate change and asteroid impacts, but they could become extinct in the next 10-20 years unless sufficient international cooperation is mounted to reverse this dramatic decline," says Larry Crowder of Duke University. "There are probably fewer than 1500 females nesting throug...Early Mars: Warm enough to melt water?
While some researchers believe that only asteroid collisions made Mars warm enough to have running r...id-ocean ridges on Earth and can also occur during asteroid collisions that excavate large amounts of mantle material. "We do not really know much about how pl...Finding life away from Earth will be tough task, says noted paleontologist
...preserved in Earth rocks blasted to the moon by an asteroid or meteor. Others believe much of the evidence has been erased forever by the constant heat and pressure of plate tectonics. But learning as much as possible about the earliest life on Earth is probably the best starting point for trying to find life...New research questions evidence for earliest life on earth
...tory of the Earth is one dominated by many violent asteroid impacts, some of which would have been capable of entirely boiling off all water on the planet, including the oceans, and sterilizing the planet of all life. Such a scenario suggests that life may have originated and been exterminated a number of t...Cosmic impacts implicated in both the rise and fall of dinosaurs
... space objects, creates a time marker for comet or asteroid impacts." said Kent. "Correlating the finds with e... adds to the speculation that there was a comet or asteroid impact about 200 million years ago, followed relatively quickly by the rising dominance of dinosaur ...Scientists push back primate origins from 65 million to 85 million years ago
...d until the end of the Cretaceous (65 Mya) when an asteroid cleared the way by hitting the earth and wiping out dinosaurs. If times of divergence within the primate tree are revised accordingly, it is likely that the divergence of humans from chimps occurred about 8 Mya rather than 5 Mya. An earlier orig...Impact events' kinetic energy may be key to understanding the severity of mass extinctions
The kinetic energy created by asteroid and comet impacts with the Earth may be key to linking some impacts with mass extinction events. Michael Lucas, a geology student at Florida Gulf Coast University, believes that the severity of four extinction events during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic ...UNC geologist, students to unveil 221 million-year-old top N.C. fossil
... climate change or a global catastrophe such as an asteroid or comet impact. Dinosaurs then got bigger, dominated mammals and went extinct themselves about 65 million years ago. Because it has not been published, Carter cannot disclose the proposed scientific name of the new reptile. He said it will be named...The K-T impact extinctions: Dust didn't do it
Scientists basically agree that an asteroid struck the Earth some 65 million years ago and its... amiss, and therefore damage estimates from future asteroid impacts are also amiss. This latter point became a recent issue when a large asteroid passed near t...Geophysicist studies life in the early solar system
...e inhabitable again, thousands of years after each asteroid impact, the survivors would have emerged from thei...laces and spread across the planet - until another asteroid struck and the whole cycle was repeated. ``We know that large asteroid impacts can sterilize or part...Crater makes an impact on three sessions at GSA
...bigger and deeper than we imagined: This comet or asteroid shot through the Earths atmosphere, leaving a vacuum in its wake. Then it hit, splashing through several hundred feet of ocean and slicing through several thousand feet of coastal plain sediments, says Powars. It fractured the crystalline bedrock b......the extinctions in the marine realm. Then there's; asteroid impacthowever, no impact structure can be tied directly to the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. And the current favorite hypothesis is that flood basalts that constitute the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province erupted. And the release of CO2 or SO2 aerosol...