Some 66 million years ago, Earth was hit by a giant object from space leading to one of its greatest catastrophes. The impact devastated the planet and wiped out around three quarters of plant and animal life, including the dinosaurs.
Today, all that is left of this impact are the faint remains of a giant crater that sits beneath the Yukatan Peninsula in the Gulf of Mexico. So weathered is the Chicxulub crater that it was not discovered until the late 1970s. The impact also left behind a thin layer of chromium-rich dust which suggested the impactor must have been a carbonaceous chondrite rock type.
Since then, researchers have studied this event with intense interest to better understand what caused it. However, this is still something of a mystery.
