A cataclysmic asteroid collision may not sound like the starting place for life. But 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub impactor that wiped out the dinosaurs and much of the Cretaceous period’s fauna also kick-started a hydrothermal system that became a hotbed for life to recover in the local area. That’s the finding from a recent paper published in Nature Communications.
The impact itself was truly a catastrophe, says Philippe Claeys, Chair of the Large Research Group AMGC at Vrije Universiteit Brussel and a co-author on the paper. When the asteroid – estimated at 10 to 15 kilometers [about 6 miles to 9 miles] in diameter – slammed into the earth it sent vast amounts of energy into the atmosphere, resulting in a massive cloud plume that lead to the collapse of photosynthesis, large-scale cooling, and the demise of up to 70 percent of life on earth, including the dinosaurs.
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