In the Northern Hemisphere, seasonal flowers had just started blossoming, trees were budding and fish had begun to forage.
It was early spring in the Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, moments before a seven-mile-wide asteroid would hit the Yucatan with blustering force. A few hours later, most life within 3,000 miles would be dead, killed by debris, burned alive or poisoned.
"It sounds harsh but if you were outside, and not underground or under water, you were dead," says Melanie During, a researcher who studies the dinosaur’s demise at Uppsala University in Sweden.
Using paddlefish and sturgeon fossils found in modern North Dakota, During showed that the asteroid hit Earth in early spring, in recent study published in Nature. The catastrophe came just when animals were hatching and vegetation was blooming, instantly killing the next generation.
And those that didn’t die initially, would soon fall under the weight of famine. ...
