A new study shows that when the asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, a lot of it was thrown high into the air.
Once airborne, this large cloud of sulfur-bearing gases blocked the sun and cooled Earth for hundreds of years.
James Witts is a lecturer in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. The climate change that was associated with it was much greater than we thought.
The sulfur that fell onto the land may have washed away into the ocean, which may explain why it took so long for marine life to recover.
The famous space rock is a dinosaur-killing asteroid.
Witts said that the finding was completely unexpected. The team had originally planned to study the chemistry of ancient shells near the Brazos River in Falls County, Texas. It is not too far away from the crater where the asteroid struck.
The researchers took a few samples at the site. The sulfur samples were analyzed at the University of St. Andrew's in Scotland by the study co-researcher.
Witts said that the researchers found a very unusual signal. Mass changes occur when sulfur enters the atmosphere and interacts with UV light.
Earth is 4.5 billion years old and has been surrounded by an oxygenated atmosphere for 2.3 billion years. Witts said that volcanic eruptions release sulfur high into the atmosphere, which can mix with snow and end up in high concentrations in ice cores at the poles.
He said that the sea has its own signature, which makes it hard for this signal to be seen in marine rocks.
If the asteroid had hit somewhere else, there wouldn't have been as much sulfur released into the atmosphere, and the climate change that followed might not have been as severe.
According to climate models, the sulfur aerosols entering the atmosphere after the asteroid impact would have turned into sulfate aerosols, which would have caused 3.6 to 14 degrees Fahrenheit cooling. The climate change could have been more severe if the sulfur amount was higher.
The study was published in the journal on Monday.
It was originally published on Live Science.
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