Today on Far Future Horizons we present another episode of the
acclaimed BBC science documentary series Horizon that investigates the Cretaceous-Tertiary
(K-T) extinction that annihilated the dinosaurs and several other species some
Sixty Five Million years ago. Was this extinction event really triggered by the
impact of an asteroid or comet?
Could one of the
best known and most glamorous scientific theories be wrong? Until recently most
scientists thought they knew what killed off the dinosaurs. It was a 10 km-wide
meteorite which smashed into Yucatan in Mexico. It
caused world-wide forest fires, tsunamis several kilometres high, and an
'impact winter' - in which dust blocked out the sun for months or years. It was
thought the dinosaurs were blasted, roasted, and frozen to death, in that
order.
