The debate over what wiped out the dinosaurs has been raging for three decades. Now, a study claims they were actually wiped out 65 million years ago by a meteor shower lasting thousands of years.
Scientists had previously identified a giant Chicxulub crater in Gulf of Mexico as the site of a single meteor strike thought to have obliterated prehistoric life on Earth. But evidence for a second impact in Ukraine, dating back thousands of years before Chicxulub impact, has raised the possibility that the dinosaurs may have been blitzed with a shower of meteorites, the Daily Telegraph reported.
The Boltysh Crater in Ukraine was discovered in 2002. But paleontologists have unearthed a second cavity within the crater which they believe was caused by aftermath of the Chicxulub impact — suggesting the two meteor strikes occurred years apart as part of a wider “shower”. The palaeontologists dated the two Boltysh impact zones by examining the pollen and spores of fossil plants in the layers of mud within. Ferns are among the first plants to colonise a devastated landscape after a catastrophe, leaving layers of spores — dubbed “fern spikes” — which are considered good markers of past impact events. They found a second “fern spike” one metre above the first in the Boltysh crater — suggesting that two separate strikes occurred thousands of years apart.
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Church fire damages Titian painting
Venice: David and Goliath, the 600-year-old work by Venetian painter Titian was damaged on Sunday by sprinklers used to extinguish a fire that broke out in the church of Santa Maria della Salute in Venice.
The fire broke out in a building next to Santa Maria della Salute where Titian’s 1544 ceiling painting is located. The cause of the fire was not known. Other Titian works inside the vestry also suffered damage from the sprinklers that were activated by the flames. The work by Tiziano Vecellio, or Titian, is among the artist’s most prominent paintings Italian art critic and politician Vittorio Scarbi said.
By arrangement with AKI