A cura di @NedCuttle21(Ulm).

Nella formazione geologica nota come Hell Creek, che comprende territori del Montana, del South e North Dakota e del Wyoming, il 37enne paleontologo statunitense Robert DePalma sostiene di aver trovato consistenti tracce dello tsunami originatosi in seguito all’impatto dell’asteroide che 66 milioni di anni fa circa pose fine all’esistenza dei dinosauri. Ne parla un longform pubblicato sul New Yorker.

If, on a certain evening about sixty-­six million years ago, you had stood somewhere in North America and looked up at the sky, you would have soon made out what appeared to be a star. If you watched for an hour or two, the star would have seemed to grow in brightness, although it barely moved. That’s because it was not a star but an asteroid, and it was headed directly for Earth at about forty-five thousand miles an hour. Sixty hours later, the asteroid hit. The air in front was compressed and violently heated, and it blasted a hole through the atmosphere, generating a supersonic shock wave. The asteroid struck a shallow sea where the Yucatán peninsula is today. In that moment, the Cretaceous period ended and the Paleogene period began.

Immagine da Wikimedia.