It Took 10 Million Years for Biodiversity to Recover From Dino-killing Impact

A new study examines how the ocean food chain recovered in the aftermath of the dino-killing asteroid impact by sampling fossils of single-celled creatures called planktonic foraminifera.

D-brief
By Eric Betz
Apr 9, 2019 10:18 PMApr 18, 2020 9:07 PM
Foraminifera - USGS
(Credit: Randolph Femmer/U.S. Geological Survey)

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Some 66 million years ago, a city-sized asteroid struck off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, killing 75 percent of life on Earth, including the non-avian dinosaurs. The space rock left a roughly 100-mile-wide crater and destroyed global ecosystems.

Now, a new study shows that it took more than 10 million years of evolution before biodiversity recovered. And the scientists behind the study say their find carries a grave warning for our current era of human-caused extinction, dubbed the Anthropocene. It shows that biodiversity will need millions of years to recover from the damage currently being done.

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