National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, March 15, 2010

Photo: "Dino Killer" Asteroid Was Half the Size Predicted?


Email to a Friend	<< Back to Full Story

When large meteorites strike Earth, as pictured above in an artist's conception, they often vaporize and change the ratio of certain chemicals in ocean water and sediments.

A new technique that analyzes these chemical clues suggests that the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago might have been less than half the size previously thought.

Image by Don Davis/NASA