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.
