The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2019
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
65 million years ago an asteroid hit the earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs along with three quarters of all species on earth at the time.
The crater where it hit was discovered on the Yucatan peninsula in 1978 during a geological survey for the Mexican state oil company Pemex. It was named Chicxulub.
Lucy Burns speaks to Glen Penfield, who first identified the crater, and Alan Hildebrand, whose research confirmed the discovery.
Image: NASA high resolution topographical map of the Yucatan Peninsula created with data collected in the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and released on March 7, 2003 in Washington, D.C. In the upper left portion of the peninsula, a faint arc of dark green is visible indicating the remnants of the Chicxulub impact crater. (Photo by NASA/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 1:03.5 | Listen on BBC Sounds. Hi and thanks for downloading witness history with me Lucy Burns from the BBC World Service. |
| 1:15.6 | Today we're going back further than usual all the way back to the time of the dinosaurs. |
| 1:21.2 | 65 million years ago something very strange happened to the planet Earth. |
| 1:26.0 | 75% of all the species living there were wiped out. |
| 1:31.0 | What caused this catastrophe has until recently been a total mystery? |
| 1:35.0 | Perhaps the climate deteriorated, becoming too hot or too cold, or suddenly too wet or too dry. |
| 1:44.5 | Millions of years later in the second half of what we call the 20th century, |
... |
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