The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs struck what is now Mexico with such force that it blasted molten ejecta high above the atmosphere before it rained back down across the planet, and many of the survivors were small, sheltered creatures — including early mammals on the line that would eventually lead to us.

About 66 million years ago, an asteroid roughly 10 to 15 kilometres across struck the shallow sea covering what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. It left a crater, named Chicxulub after a nearby town, on the order of 180 kilometres wide. The impact is the event most directly associated with the end-Cretaceous mass [...] The post The asteroid that ended the dinosaurs struck what is now Mexico with such force that it blasted molten ejecta high above the atmosphere before it rained back down