El documental "El Final de los Dinosaurios" explora las causas y consecuencias de la extinción de estas fascinantes criaturas que dominaron la Tierra durante millones de años. A través de un enfoque educativo, analizamos los principales eventos que a la desaparición de los dinosaurios, como el impacto de un asteroide y las erupciones volcánicas masivas. Este documental presenta información valiosa sobre el cambio climático y sus efectos en los ecosistemas de la época, proporcionando una comprensión profunda de cómo estos cambios llevaron a la extinción de especies.
Mediante gráficos impresionantes y entrevistas con expertos en paleontología, "El Final de los Dinosaurios" sumerge a los espectadores en el mundo prehistórico, mostrando la diversidad de especies que existieron y cómo se adaptaron a su entorno. Además, el documental invita a reflexionar sobre la importancia de la conservación de la biodiversidad en el presente, relacionando la extinción de los dinosaurios con la crisis ecológica actual.
No solo se trata de un relato sobre el pasado, sino también de una lección sobre la fragilidad de los ecosistemas y la responsabilidad que tenemos de proteger nuestro planeta. Al final, los espectadores obtendrán una perspectiva más clara de la historia de la Tierra y de la necesidad de cuidar nuestro entorno.
Acompáñanos en este viaje fascinante y descubre los misterios que rodean el final de los dinosaurios.
**Hashtags:** #Dinosaurios #Extinción #Documental
**Keywords:** dinosaurios, extinción de dinosaurios, documental dinosaurios, impacto de asteroide, erupciones volcánicas, paleontología, biodiversidad, ecosistemas, cambio climático, historia de la Tierra.
Mediante gráficos impresionantes y entrevistas con expertos en paleontología, "El Final de los Dinosaurios" sumerge a los espectadores en el mundo prehistórico, mostrando la diversidad de especies que existieron y cómo se adaptaron a su entorno. Además, el documental invita a reflexionar sobre la importancia de la conservación de la biodiversidad en el presente, relacionando la extinción de los dinosaurios con la crisis ecológica actual.
No solo se trata de un relato sobre el pasado, sino también de una lección sobre la fragilidad de los ecosistemas y la responsabilidad que tenemos de proteger nuestro planeta. Al final, los espectadores obtendrán una perspectiva más clara de la historia de la Tierra y de la necesidad de cuidar nuestro entorno.
Acompáñanos en este viaje fascinante y descubre los misterios que rodean el final de los dinosaurios.
**Hashtags:** #Dinosaurios #Extinción #Documental
**Keywords:** dinosaurios, extinción de dinosaurios, documental dinosaurios, impacto de asteroide, erupciones volcánicas, paleontología, biodiversidad, ecosistemas, cambio climático, historia de la Tierra.
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FunTranscript
00:00The death of dinosaurs is a mystery lost in the mist of time.
00:12This extraordinary murder scene is the only place in the world where we can see remains
00:17of creatures that died in that great extinction.
00:20And in the heart of it is hidden one of the greatest mysteries of science.
00:29We know that dinosaurs died from the impact of a great asteroid against the Earth.
00:35But how could it kill not only the dinosaurs of the place, but all those who inhabited
00:41the world?
00:47We have accessed exclusively an extraordinary expedition to delve into the crater of the
00:52asteroid.
00:53And what they are discovering is much more incredible than Hollywood could ever imagine.
01:05The asteroid triggered an unstoppable and lethal chain of events.
01:13And now, thanks to the discoveries of this expedition, we can reveal exactly what happened
01:19the day the dinosaurs died.
01:29To understand what happened, we start here, in the Visti Valdez lands, New Mexico.
01:35To know what the world was like the day before the asteroid hit the Earth.
01:41The paleontologists Steve Brussate and Tom Williamson are looking for dinosaur fossils.
01:45A stream.
01:52That looks like a bone.
01:54Is it a turtle?
01:55This is one of the richest areas in fossils in the world.
01:59Yes, it's a bone.
02:00Okay.
02:01Come on, look at that.
02:03It has a layer of bone.
02:05Many times we travel through these wasteland lands looking for things that protrude between
02:09the rocks.
02:10And that's always the first clue.
02:12This one's really sticking out.
02:15We can tell from the shape that it's part of the backbone of a dinosaur.
02:20It's the backbone of a dinosaur with horns.
02:24It's probably a Pentaceratops, which means five-horned face.
02:29Two horns on the eyes, one on the nose, and two on the cheeks.
02:34The Triceratops has three horns on its face.
02:37This one had two more, five in total.
02:39So it was an extravagant body of a dinosaur.
02:46Before they extract the fossil, Steve and Tom have to wrap it in plaster, hoping that
02:5266 million years later, it won't break when they take it out.
02:55Yeah.
02:56Ready?
02:57Yeah.
02:58Okay.
02:59There it is.
03:00There it is.
03:01Good.
03:02Look at that.
03:03Not bad.
03:09It's awesome.
03:11So here it is, that's the inside.
03:15This is part of the backbone of a Pentaceratops.
03:18And it would have gone somewhere like this.
03:27With fossils like this one, we can get an idea of what the appearance of these powerful
03:33beasts was like, and even how they lived.
03:39They were the main herbivores of the place.
03:43This whole area is absolutely littered with these kinds of bones.
03:46They were the cows of the Cretaceous.
03:49They were everywhere in this landscape.
03:52The Pentaceratops was a creature that wandered through North America in the Late Cretaceous
03:58during the last 10 million years of life of the dinosaurs.
04:03At that time, the landscape was very different from the current one.
04:09During those 10 million years, this was a kind of jungle, to get an idea.
04:14There was dense vegetation, big trees, lush forests and rivers flowing through the jungles.
04:21Food was abundant for the herbivores, who in turn were prey to the most terrifying carnivores
04:27of all.
04:32The things that were feeding on the herbivores were some of the most famous dinosaurs of
04:36all, the Tyrannosaurus.
04:38So there was Tyrannosaurus Rex here, in New Mexico.
04:43But there is also the grandfather of this one, the Vistageversor, which had about 60
04:49of these very sharp teeth, and that's what he used to run down the bones of these herbivorous
04:56dinosaurs.
04:57The dinosaurs dominated the land for 160 million years, but not only here, in what we now call
05:19New Mexico, but all over the planet.
05:30That's what the world was like 66 billion years ago.
05:34That's what the city was, when things really changed.
05:39This was the landscape that the Earth offered the day before the death of the dinosaurs,
05:44when the asteroid was advancing through space.
05:5066 million years ago, our world was very different.
05:55The sea level was higher and the continents were closer.
06:00But the main difference was that the dinosaurs dominated the planet.
06:06Until one day, everything changed.
06:11An asteroid hit the Earth in the Gulf of Mexico.
06:15The pressure was about the same as in the center of the Earth.
06:19The temperatures rose tens of thousands of degrees.
06:23Bad news for the dinosaurs of the place.
06:26They were incinerated, they were vaporized.
06:28But the most amazing thing of all is that not only the dinosaurs of the area died, but
06:34all those who inhabited the planet.
06:37We're looking at an Armageddon.
06:40And that has always been the great mystery.
06:44How could a bad day in Mexico become a massive extinction worldwide?
06:57The geologist Som Ghaliq hopes to solve the mystery once and for all.
07:04Som is part of an international group of scientists who long to discover what happened
07:09when that huge space rock perforated the Earth 66 million years ago.
07:16And how it annihilated the dinosaurs.
07:20A mission that begins in an asteroid crater, much more recent and small here, in Arizona.
07:27This simple crater here was created by an asteroid about 50 meters above the Earth
07:32about 50,000 years ago.
07:34And it's about a mile across.
07:38It's a fairly small crater.
07:40It's basically simply a bowl-shaped crater.
07:45By studying the shape of the crater and the layers of rock,
07:49geologists can find forensic data on the moment of impact and the magnitude of the explosion.
07:56Everything above the red line that we see there is material that used to be buried.
08:02It was elevated and is now upside down.
08:05Now we're seeing a pile of broken material.
08:08The effects of the impact of this asteroid would be relatively local.
08:15So it comes in at about 26,000 miles per hour.
08:19And 10 kilometers away from here, a fireball came.
08:23It's a 20-kilometer-high wave.
08:25It's a 40-kilometer-high hurricane.
08:28But that was a horrible day for Arizona.
08:35It was a horrible day for the mammoths in the area.
08:38But not a global extinction.
08:42The asteroid that annihilated the dinosaurs, 15 kilometers wide,
08:46left a crater 200 kilometers in diameter.
08:50However, despite its dimensions, it's very hard to tell.
08:55It's so well hidden that it wasn't discovered until 1990 here in the Gulf of Mexico.
09:01It's called Chicxulub.
09:03This is the Gulf of Mexico.
09:06And the impact crater is here.
09:09But the reason it wasn't discovered is because it's buried.
09:12So it's not obvious anywhere on the surface that you're on a crater.
09:17Because it was buried with 66 million years of limestone.
09:23Hidden under 600 meters of limestone,
09:26the Chicxulub crater is not only huge,
09:29but it has characteristics that elevate it to a new category of supercraters.
09:34Chicxulub is one of the largest impact craters there is.
09:38It's not like the one we have behind us,
09:41which has a cone shape and is overcome by two types of craters.
09:46If this one were a little bit bigger,
09:49we would see a certain rebound, a central elevation.
09:52And if it were even bigger,
09:54we would see that this elevation seems to collapse outward
09:58into a rocky ring called the peak ring.
10:01This peak ring can only be found in the craters
10:04caused by the major impacts.
10:07And it's its rocks that give us the best clues about the moment of impact.
10:12Sohn and his colleagues will enter the heart of the asteroid crater
10:16under the sea in the Gulf of Mexico.
10:21The goal of our next project is to drill that peak ring
10:25just here offshore, where it's the shallowest area.
10:29And we're just going to drill it and we're just going to get a drill sample.
10:34And when they do, those rocks will reveal what happened in the minutes,
10:38hours and days after the impact,
10:41and they will solve the riddle of how the dinosaurs died.
10:55After 20 million plans,
10:57and with an international team of scientists from 11 countries,
11:01the drilling of this ambitious project to investigate the Chuxulub crater
11:05is about to begin.
11:08Right now, beneath the drilling platform
11:11and beneath our sailboat,
11:13is the Chuxulub peak ring,
11:15buried by 66 million years of limestone.
11:20We've picked this area because it's the place
11:23where the ring is closest to the current seabed.
11:27The pillars are taller than I imagined.
11:29Yeah.
11:30Yeah.
11:31Woo-hoo!
11:32There we go!
11:35All right.
11:37Even so, the team must cross 600 metres of limestone
11:41before they reach the crater.
11:45For eight weeks, the drills will run 24 hours a day.
11:51We run two shifts,
11:52from midnight to midday, and from midday to midnight.
11:55We run two shifts,
11:56from midnight to midday, and from midday to midnight.
12:01Here we go.
12:14This is the drill.
12:15Each one of these little nodules is an industrial diamond.
12:18We'll try and get 100 metres out of it.
12:25It's a great effort on a human scale.
12:27People are very excited about science.
12:31And that's what scientific dreams are made of.
12:40It's a unique expedition.
12:42No one has ever drilled the peak ring of an asteroid crater.
12:50Chuxulub is the only one on Earth whose ring is still intact.
12:56The next closest one is in the moon's hidden face.
13:02The co-coordinator and initiator of the expedition is Jo Morgan.
13:06I've been excited for years,
13:08so to see that it's actually happening is very scary.
13:12We've worked so hard to get to this point
13:15that we want some pretty good results.
13:21As they go deeper into the marine bed,
13:24the team extracts 3-metre-long rock samples.
13:31This is the first core or complete witness of the expedition.
13:35We're literally extracting 3-metre-long rock cylindrical samples,
13:39and as we go deeper down in the hole,
13:42we go further to the moment of impact,
13:45about 66 million years ago.
13:51As soon as the core comes up on deck,
13:53we give a small sample of the material.
13:55We take it back to the lab,
13:57and we determine its age in less than 5 minutes
14:00after it has appeared on deck.
14:03In a set of portable cabins,
14:05which they affectionately call their main street,
14:08the scientists study each core with INCO as they extract it.
14:13I just got some sweet images.
14:15Look at this crystal.
14:17It's the material of the core catcher,
14:19seen with a microscope.
14:22We've been using the so-called acoustic imagery,
14:26which offers us an image of the inside of the hole,
14:29and some of them,
14:31especially the layers after the impact,
14:33are a real gem.
14:38When the team begins to extract cores from the crater itself,
14:41they will give them clues about the asteroid,
14:44its size, speed,
14:46the force of the explosion,
14:48and the chain of events that led to the end of the dinosaur reign.
14:59But first, they will extract core after core
15:02from the layers of limestone,
15:05and they will inspect each sample
15:07looking for any sign of change
15:09indicating that they are approaching the crater.
15:19One of the key mysteries for the team
15:22is how an asteroid that fell in the Gulf of Mexico
15:25killed all the dinosaurs in the world.
15:30Here, in New Jersey,
15:32paleontologist Ken Lacobara
15:34believes he has found some victims of that fateful day.
15:39Animals killed by the asteroid,
15:41despite being 2,700 kilometres away from the crater,
15:46As we go down this road,
15:48we go back millions of years in time,
15:50and at the bottom of the crater
15:52we will be right at the top,
15:54like 66 million years ago.
15:59But at that time,
16:01everything was very different.
16:05So this is all underwater.
16:07If you look at the top of the tallest trees
16:09about 70 metres high,
16:11we can imagine the level of the ocean
16:1366 million years ago.
16:19And at the bottom of the quarry,
16:21Ken has dived into the bed of that ancient sea.
16:25Oh, that's beautiful.
16:28It's beautiful, isn't it?
16:30I can hear it getting a little crunchy here.
16:33And he has unearthed an amazing and fatal scenario
16:36in a thin layer of ancient sand.
16:39We are in the boundary,
16:41right here, at the end of the dinosaur era.
16:44We have a fatal scenario here.
16:47Look at that beautiful clam in that layer.
16:50It lived 66 million years ago.
16:52It's a beautiful clam.
16:54It's a beautiful clam.
16:56It's a beautiful clam.
16:58It lived 66 million years ago.
17:01It died during that time
17:03when the dinosaurs did it
17:05and 75% of the species of the earth died.
17:10In this layer of bones in his quarry,
17:12Ken has found an amazing amount
17:14and variety of animals
17:16that died together.
17:19We find the remains of a mosasaur.
17:21Mosasaurs were giant sea lizards
17:23the size of a bus.
17:25They had fins on the ends
17:27and a six-foot-long jaw
17:29full of sharp teeth like this one,
17:31and it would fit down here
17:33along the score of other teeth.
17:41Now, the top part of the throat
17:43had another pair of jaws
17:45and these teeth went back out
17:47keeping the prey from escaping out.
17:50This thing was a sea monster.
17:57There was an incredible variety of creatures,
18:00both big and small,
18:02but the most amazing thing
18:04is that many of its skeletons
18:06are still together.
18:09This beautiful fossil
18:11is from an ancient marine crocodile.
18:13They have a very long snout
18:15that goes out like this
18:17full of teeth,
18:19and these animals sit at the bottom
18:21of the sea with their mouths open
18:23waiting for something to come in
18:25and bam!
18:27They were ambush predators.
18:29As you can see, the skeleton is articulated
18:31which means that their bones
18:33are still connected as they were in life.
18:37This is a clue to what happened that day.
18:39They died here
18:41and shortly after they would be buried.
18:46As clues are revealed,
18:48it becomes evident
18:50the mass massacre that took place here.
18:53In a small corner of the quarry,
18:55Ken and his team
18:57discovered a killing scene
18:59where the fossils rest
19:01as they were found.
19:05In five years of excavation,
19:0725,000 fossils.
19:10There are a lot of dead bodies.
19:13We're looking at an armageddon.
19:16These animals lived and died together
19:18suddenly,
19:20they were quickly buried
19:22and now
19:24we have in front of us
19:26the fatal scene that took place
19:2866 million years ago.
19:30From the sands of saber teeth
19:32to the crocodiles, snails
19:34and turtles,
19:36nothing escaped the slaughter.
19:38We can see by the different species
19:40that we find here
19:42that it was a widespread catastrophe.
19:44Ken believes
19:46that these are the first victims
19:48of the collision
19:50to be discovered
19:52and he thinks he has found
19:54the evidence to prove it.
19:58What you see here,
20:00these things quite tiny,
20:02are crystal spherules.
20:04When an asteroid hits the earth,
20:06the rocks melt
20:08and they fly up to the atmosphere
20:10and when they cool down so fast
20:12they don't turn into rocks
20:14but they turn into glass
20:16and from the sky
20:18small drops of melted glass
20:20begin to rain
20:22which we find in this layer of bones,
20:24in the mass death layer
20:26that we see here.
20:28But we have more.
20:30In addition to spherules,
20:32we also find crushed quartz,
20:34tiny grains of sand
20:36with peculiar fracture lines.
20:38It's a very distinctive pattern.
20:40It's either nuclear detonation
20:42or the impact of an asteroid
20:44and I'm pretty sure
20:46the dinosaurs had nuclear weapons.
20:50More and more evidence
20:52indicates that these animals
20:54were victims of the meteorite impact,
20:56the first to be found
20:58all over the world.
21:00Well, at the fossil quarry,
21:02in the mass death layer,
21:04we have quartz,
21:06we have spherules
21:08I think that all points
21:10to the fact that we find ourselves
21:12in front of beings
21:14that perished in the crucial
21:16and calamitous day
21:18that killed the dinosaurs
21:20and shaped out the modern world
21:22as we know it.
21:24If the asteroid could be judged,
21:26these tests would suffice to condemn it.
21:28This is the only place in the world
21:30where you can see remains of creatures
21:32that died because of the asteroid impact.
21:38But the question remains the same.
21:40How could the impact of an asteroid
21:42in the Gulf of Mexico,
21:44more than 3,000 kilometers away,
21:46cause such carnage in New Jersey?
21:50How did a local event
21:52turn into a global devastation?
22:00And the mystery grows even more
22:02considering that in relation to our planet
22:04the asteroid was tiny.
22:08So if the Earth was the size
22:10of this ball of balls,
22:12the asteroid that hit us
22:14would have been the size
22:16of just one of these grains of sand.
22:18So it didn't move the Earth
22:20on its axis,
22:22just like a grain of sand
22:24couldn't move this ball
22:26or destroy it.
22:28But it did cause 75% of life
22:30on Earth to go extinct,
22:32including dinosaurs
22:34or at least non-flyers.
22:36That's a really bad point.
22:40We return to the Gulf of Mexico
22:42where the perforation continues.
22:44The expedition waits
22:46to reach the crater at any time
22:48and reach the rocks
22:50that will unravel the mystery
22:52of what made that global annihilation
22:54possible.
22:56Let me look at this in the microscope.
22:58I would say it's
23:00about 64 million and a half
23:02or 64 million and a half
23:04or 63 million and a half
23:06years.
23:08Wow.
23:10So this was E4, which is
23:1253 million and a half,
23:14and now we are at 63 million
23:16and a half.
23:18Yes, that's a good estimate,
23:2010 million years in three meters.
23:22We've been stuck in the same area,
23:24we've been moving very slowly
23:26and then, bam, a big jump in time.
23:28This huge jump in time
23:30indicates that they could
23:32reach the crater at any time
23:34and at three weeks from the
23:36start of the perforation.
23:38But as you go down,
23:40there's more and more of that.
23:42It's got a greenish tone.
23:44The evidence of a success
23:46on a scale that no one expected.
23:48Now we've now had four more
23:50coarser grains of sand
23:52and I think the only process
23:54that could generate something
23:56similar is a tsunami.
23:58And the fact that we're already
24:00not only in the largest
24:02but also the largest tsunami
24:04deposit discovered.
24:06Evidence of a much greater
24:08violence than expected.
24:10A great tsunami deposit.
24:12Or a great tsunami cake.
24:14With pieces of glass.
24:18And just under the proof
24:20of a huge tsunami,
24:22something changes again.
24:24Look at the color of the matrix.
24:26It goes from green to red.
24:28It looks like a melt.
24:30Yes, it looks like a melt.
24:32It looks like a giant melt sample.
24:34This rock is not easy to melt,
24:36but the enormous pressure
24:38from the impact did it.
24:40It's a sign that the team
24:42has reached the crater.
24:44We are now completely
24:46into the impact rocks.
24:48It's really easy to see
24:50because it's granite
24:52and we can see these big spots
24:54like a leopard.
24:56This granite was dragged
24:58here from the depths
25:00of the earth's crust.
25:02So this was formed
25:04at the time that the dinosaurs
25:06died.
25:08This stone tumble
25:10is a proof of the
25:12inconceivable force of the impact.
25:14That's this guy.
25:16During the remaining
25:18five weeks, the team
25:20crosses another 700 meters
25:22from the crater's peak ring.
25:24I don't think this could have been better.
25:26As for the peak ring,
25:28we have about 700 meters of material,
25:30so we're happy.
25:32I'll not forget about this place.
25:40Son, Joe and the team
25:42leave with their precious
25:44cargo.
25:48In it, the clues are hidden
25:50about how the dinosaurs died.
25:54After four months
25:56of finishing the drilling,
25:58the expedition's team
26:00meets in Bremen, Germany
26:02to analyze their
26:04precious rock columns.
26:06Inside these cores
26:08are the evidence
26:10that will reveal minute by minute
26:12what happened after the asteroid
26:14hit and what it meant
26:16for the dinosaurs.
26:18Unraveling the secret
26:20is a more complicated task.
26:22More than 800 meters of rock
26:24must be carefully
26:26divided, examined
26:28and photographed.
26:30And what they tell
26:32is an impressive story
26:34of violence.
26:38This core,
26:40higher than the crater,
26:42presents the usual geology
26:44of a marine bed.
26:46Layer upon layer of rocks
26:48of a similar appearance
26:50accumulate.
26:52These 3 meters of limestone
26:54took 10 million years
26:56to accumulate.
26:58But the impact of the asteroid
27:00affected the geology much faster.
27:04The next 600 meters of rock
27:06were deposited in a single day
27:08as the impact force
27:10crossed the crust
27:12of the Earth as a mass.
27:14Leaving layers of granite,
27:16sand and melted rock
27:18in a massive chaos.
27:22What we have here
27:24is granite, like the one
27:26we have in the kitchen.
27:28Only this one comes from
27:30the crater of Chicxulub
27:32and has been subjected
27:34to a lot of pressure,
27:36a stressed granite.
27:38The transformation of this stressed granite
27:40is the proof that explains
27:42what happened in the first seconds
27:44of the impact.
27:46This is what normal granite
27:48would look like.
27:50We can see how hard it is
27:52and that if we cut it
27:54we could make a funnel with it.
27:56It's a very solid material.
27:58But this, on the other hand,
28:00has completely changed
28:02due to the shockwaves
28:04that went through it
28:06after the impact.
28:08It's super light
28:10and fairly fragile
28:12because it's been very stressed,
28:14and all this was about
28:1610 kilometers deep in the crust.
28:18But that process
28:20elevated it and it crumbled
28:22into an entire ring of mountains
28:24of this granite.
28:26And the amazing thing is
28:28that it all happened in a matter of minutes.
28:32Based on the core tracks,
28:34the team can reconstruct in detail
28:36the impact of Chicxulub.
28:38A rocky body
28:40of about 15 kilometers in diameter
28:42was approaching the Earth
28:44at about 60,000 kilometers per hour.
28:48Seen from the planet,
28:50it would have gone from being
28:52a point in the sky
28:54to impact it in just seconds.
29:00Too fast to see it approach.
29:02It fell into the coastal waters
29:04of northern Mexico.
29:08The asteroid evaporated instantly
29:10and the rocks
29:12of the Earth's crust
29:14disintegrated by the impact,
29:16which created a hole
29:18about 30 kilometers deep
29:20and 100 in diameter
29:22and expelled the buried granite
29:24upwards.
29:32The pulverized rock
29:34flowed like a liquid,
29:36erupting in mountains
29:38higher than the Himalayas
29:40before collapsing in a matter of minutes,
29:42forming that ring of peaks
29:44so characteristic
29:46of the greatest impacts.
29:52The Earth was shaken
29:56and finally, 66 million years later,
29:58the story of those violent
30:00ten minutes has been revealed.
30:04In this core is the proof
30:06of what happened next.
30:10This one is so unique.
30:12It contains a mixture of things
30:14that you would never normally
30:16find near each other,
30:18which is pretty amazing.
30:20If we look at the pieces of rock,
30:22we see some with angles,
30:24with corners,
30:26and ones that are pretty round.
30:30Something so round
30:32had to be in the water.
30:38It was so hot
30:40that the sea evaporated,
30:42leaving a big hole
30:44about 200 kilometers in diameter.
30:50We have a big hole.
30:52The ocean has been pushed away
30:54and the ocean's got to come back.
30:56And it's so big
30:58and it's so hot
31:00that we turned it right into steam
31:02and we have this mixture
31:04so round and stuff
31:06that it all comes together
31:08to make this crazy pile of fake
31:10amalgam or topsoil.
31:14But the big question is
31:16what effect did this have
31:18on the dinosaurs?
31:22To answer that,
31:24the team needs to estimate
31:26the size of the explosion
31:28and the only way to do that
31:30is to look at the largest
31:32explosions ever made
31:34by humans.
31:44This is the Nevada Test Site,
31:46the most bombarded place
31:48on Earth.
31:50928 of the largest nuclear
31:52explosions ever made
31:54were seen here,
31:56explosions that can help
31:58physicists Mark Moslow
32:00and David Dearborn
32:02to calculate the size
32:04of the asteroid's explosion.
32:06Nice fireplace.
32:08Oh yeah, with the double window
32:10to hit the front door
32:12where the hit was.
32:14Yeah, I can see the direction
32:16from which the explosion came.
32:18This house belonged
32:20to the town of Doomtown,
32:22which survived a detonation
32:24known as Apple II
32:26in May 1955.
32:36The blast must have fallen
32:38right up to here
32:40after it blew up the windows.
32:42Those pieces of glass
32:44would be compressed by a wind
32:46of about 150 kilometers per hour.
32:48The windows would disappear, yes.
32:50And I see that this chimney
32:52has a crack.
32:54The upper part of the chimney
32:56has rotated out.
32:58And it hasn't just rotated,
33:00it has moved.
33:02Most of the damage
33:04was done by the fireball
33:06and the heat it generated
33:08or the blast wave.
33:10And the houses that were
33:12even closer didn't survive.
33:14Tests like this are very important.
33:16Those of us who work
33:18on asteroid impacts
33:20naturally started to compare
33:22them to nuclear explosions
33:24because they are similar phenomena.
33:26The investigators
33:28had high-speed cameras,
33:30meters to determine
33:32the intensity of the shock wave,
33:34the expansive wave in the air.
33:42A particular phenomenon
33:44found in nuclear explosions
33:46and asteroid impacts
33:48is the shock quartz.
33:50The pressure of the shock wave
33:52from a nuclear explosion
33:54is so high that it actually
33:56surpasses the force of a crystal.
34:02So it squeezes the crystal
34:04when it's pressed,
34:06it has to distort
34:08and that's what shock quartz is.
34:10We saw the chimney
34:12and the way it was fractured
34:16part of it was rotated
34:18and that's what happens
34:20to the internal structure
34:22of the crystals.
34:24You need the force
34:26of a nuclear explosion
34:28to break the internal structure
34:30of the quartz.
34:32The fracture lines
34:34reveal the intense pressure
34:36of the explosion.
34:40But this is nothing
34:42compared to the pressure
34:44unleashed on Chicxulub.
34:54Hidden in the layers
34:56of the core,
34:58the team finds
35:00their own shock quartz.
35:04So this is a
35:06piece of shock quartz
35:08that we extracted
35:10from Chicxulub
35:12through the microscope
35:14and it has a lot of lines.
35:16The more lines we see
35:18in different directions,
35:20the higher the pressure
35:22that was subjected to
35:24and we find pieces like this
35:26in all the impact rocks.
35:28Based on the study
35:30of nuclear explosions,
35:32Joe has been able to calibrate
35:34the magnitude of the explosion.
35:36So we use exactly
35:38the same hydrocodes
35:40and we have applied them
35:42to our simulations
35:44of formation of impact craters.
35:46This event was equivalent
35:48to 10 billion Hiroshima.
35:50It was huge,
35:52the biggest in the last 100 million years,
35:54the most catastrophic
35:56that has happened to the Earth.
36:02It was as if 10 billion
36:04atomic bombs exploded.
36:06It generated a fireball
36:08that reached
36:1010,000 degrees centigrade.
36:16In addition to a pressure wave
36:18that reduced everything to pieces.
36:26Every living being
36:28a thousand kilometers away
36:30would die instantly.
36:32And that only
36:34in the first couple of minutes.
36:40So what would be
36:42the effect of the explosion
36:44on dinosaurs like those
36:46that inhabited the Baltic lands
36:48of New Mexico?
36:50Being here,
36:52it's really hard for me to imagine
36:54what it would have been like
36:5666 million years ago
36:58when everything changed.
37:02At the beginning of that day
37:04this whole area
37:06would have been full of dinosaurs.
37:08And then,
37:10about 2,000 kilometers
37:12in this direction
37:14to the southeast,
37:16the asteroid hit the Earth.
37:18And very quickly
37:20the dinosaurs would realize
37:22that something was wrong
37:24because there would have been
37:26an enormous mushroom-shaped
37:28red cloud
37:31But that wouldn't have
37:33really affected the dinosaurs.
37:35They would have seen it,
37:37but it wouldn't have hurt them.
37:39Now, their cousins down in Texas,
37:41a thousand kilometers closer
37:43to the impact,
37:45they were toast,
37:47incinerated, disintegrated.
37:50But all over the world
37:52most of the dinosaurs
37:54were still alive.
37:56The sea monsters
37:58of Ken LaCovara in New Jersey
38:00were still swimming happily.
38:04But not for long.
38:08A deadly and unstoppable chain reaction
38:10had unleashed.
38:21A nucleus in particular
38:23of the impact crater
38:25reveals how a bad day
38:27in Mexico ended up
38:29becoming a global disaster
38:31for the dinosaurs.
38:34Okay, so you're now
38:36at the top of the boundary layer.
38:39And this is our famous
38:41nucleus 40, which is so exciting.
38:43If we look at it,
38:45we see some dark layers
38:47and we think they might be traces
38:49of the asteroid or something
38:51in the depths of the Earth
38:53that was elevated.
38:55But the important thing
38:57is not just what's on the layers,
38:59but the journey
39:01that the material undertook.
39:03We think that they probably
39:05took a couple of laps
39:07around the planet
39:09before reaching the crater.
39:11It's proof of a huge ejection
39:13of pulverized rocks
39:15and asteroid remains.
39:19And it's this ejection
39:21that turned a local disaster
39:23into a global massacre.
39:26When the asteroid hit the ground,
39:28vaporized,
39:30there was a huge column
39:32of rock vapor
39:34that expanded upward
39:36at a very high rate
39:38and outward to the rest of the planet.
39:40A blanket of dust and vapor
39:42spread rapidly
39:44from the impact area.
39:46This was hot gas rock
39:48and as it went up,
39:50it cooled and formed
39:52spheres the size
39:54of a grain of sand.
39:57When these things re-entered
39:59the atmosphere,
40:01they heated up again
40:03by the friction of the air
40:05like shooting stars.
40:07But if you were standing
40:09as we have,
40:11there was an incredible number
40:13of shooting stars,
40:15to the point of not
40:17distinguishing them up,
40:19far above you,
40:21in all directions.
40:23It wouldn't fall on you
40:25because it would be
40:27approximately 60 kilometers
40:29from the ground.
40:31But that hot lava
40:33would emit an energy
40:35several times greater
40:37than that of the sun.
40:39As the ejection expanded,
40:41the temperatures on the ground
40:43rose several hundred degrees,
40:45causing terrible fires
40:47in its wake.
40:49This was not a normal fire.
40:51It started everywhere,
40:53so it was a massive fire,
40:55and these can be much more
40:57blazing than a normal fire.
40:59All the leaves on the ground
41:01were on fire,
41:03and also the trees
41:05and the weeds.
41:10Hurricane winds were blowing
41:12towards the fire,
41:14raising the flames
41:16and consuming everything.
41:20And as a result,
41:22this steam quickly spread
41:24across the entire planet.
41:26In just a few hours,
41:28it would have reached
41:30the confines of the Earth.
41:38In the Valdia lands of New Mexico,
41:40the dinosaurs had escaped
41:42the initial explosion,
41:44but that mantle of fatality
41:46was advancing rapidly
41:48towards them.
41:51In just 11 minutes,
41:53the sky began to darken.
42:02It wasn't really a case of
42:04fire and blizzard
42:06raining down from the heavens.
42:08It was more a case of all of that stuff
42:10heating up the atmosphere
42:12and turning it into a giant radiator.
42:15For several minutes,
42:17the lava in the sky
42:19emitted a strong heat.
42:25On the ground,
42:27it would have been as hot
42:29as a pizza oven,
42:31so that, you know,
42:33destroyed a lot of the dinosaurs,
42:35but it also started to cause fires.
42:37Within an hour or two,
42:39this whole landscape
42:41was completely changed.
42:43And a new world
42:45began to emerge.
42:49The disaster spread
42:51all over the globe.
42:55But there were areas
42:57where the dinosaurs
42:59could have escaped the fires,
43:01and it didn't explain
43:03the slaughter of Ken's quarry.
43:05The sea didn't catch fire.
43:09However,
43:11a devastating final blow
43:13would be expected,
43:15and the proof is not present
43:17in the cores,
43:19but absent in them.
43:21A particular mineral of sulphate.
43:25This is gypsum.
43:27At the time of the impact
43:29in Yucatan,
43:31there was gypsum,
43:33a material that contains sulphates.
43:35Considering that the asteroid
43:37landed in shallow waters,
43:39there were large amounts
43:41of gypsum in the crater.
43:43If we look at the recovered core
43:45of the Chicxulub crater,
43:47we don't find any gypsum.
43:49There's nothing.
43:51It's supposed to be full of gypsum,
43:53but it's not.
43:55Which means that
43:57at the time of the impact,
43:59almost the entire sequence
44:01of gypsum present in the object
44:03went into the atmosphere.
44:05This is perhaps
44:07The team has discovered
44:09that the amount of this harmful sulphate
44:11in the atmosphere must have been huge.
44:13Much larger than imagined.
44:15This material,
44:17evaporated by the impact
44:19and released into the atmosphere,
44:21was the killer.
44:23Gypsum like this
44:25was what killed the dinosaurs.
44:27This vast cloud of dust
44:29would be the last straw
44:31for the surviving dinosaurs.
44:33The spread of remains
44:35blocked the sun's rays
44:37and the light went out.
44:45After the fires
44:47consumed themselves,
44:49the darkness suddenly darkened.
44:51There would probably be
44:53less light than on a moonless night.
44:55We can imagine
44:57the last tyrannosaurs
44:59trying to hunt something,
45:01but that would be very difficult.
45:03So if they survived the fire,
45:05they probably would have starved to death.
45:07Because there was no light,
45:09it was around to be very cold,
45:11and after a few days,
45:13the temperature had dropped
45:15below freezing point.
45:17Global temperatures
45:19plummeted 10 degrees centigrade
45:21in a matter of days,
45:23and photosynthesis stopped
45:25both on land and at sea.
45:28All that debris,
45:30all the sulfates in the atmosphere
45:32blocked out the sun.
45:36And then the food chain broke.
45:38And the food chain in the ocean
45:40was very short.
45:42In less than a month,
45:44from plankton to super predators.
45:46So even if they had survived that day,
45:48they would have nothing to eat.
45:50They would starve to death,
45:52and if you were as big as a Mosasaur,
45:54you would be one of the first to disappear.
45:58It was this nuclear winter
46:00that caused the massive killing
46:02of Ken's quarry.
46:06The green landscapes
46:08turned gray.
46:12With nothing to eat on the entire planet,
46:14dinosaurs had little chance
46:16of surviving.
46:28After many months of darkness,
46:30the sun's light
46:32gradually returned to the surface,
46:34and with it,
46:36a new development.
46:38The surviving creatures
46:40had inherited the earth.
46:44What I have on the tip of my finger
46:46is a lower tooth
46:48of something called Mesodma.
46:51It was a little guy who was probably
46:53about the size of a mouse.
46:58This is a tiny,
47:00but very few species
47:02that we know
47:04that survived global devastation.
47:06It's a blade-like tooth,
47:08and it was able to feed on insects
47:10and seeds,
47:12so it didn't depend on photosynthesis.
47:16The death of the dinosaurs
47:18allowed these small survivors to grow,
47:20and the mammals would evolve
47:22quickly to take over the planet.
47:24These canyons
47:26are the sediments
47:28that have accumulated
47:30for hundreds of thousands of years
47:32since the extinction of the dinosaurs,
47:34and here we find the first mammals.
47:36In fact, the mammals
47:38originated almost at the same time
47:40as the dinosaurs,
47:42and they lived throughout
47:44the entire era of the dinosaurs,
47:46but they remained relatively small.
47:48It wasn't until the dinosaurs were extinct
47:50that mammals really began to grow,
47:52to diversify,
47:54and to become large animals.
47:56This is the jaw of a mammal
47:58that had a head like that of a wolf.
48:04It just was a paradise
48:06for these new animals.
48:10Without the mammals
48:12that survived that extinction,
48:14we wouldn't be here,
48:16because among those groups of survivors
48:18were some of our ancestors.
48:20It was a stroke of luck
48:22that paved the way
48:24for our own evolution.
48:28If the asteroid
48:30had hit just a few seconds
48:32before or after,
48:34history would have been very different.
48:38Where it hit
48:40was particularly disastrous
48:42for life.
48:44Lots of this volatile material
48:46was released into the atmosphere
48:48and if it had just
48:50been a slightly different
48:52rotation of the Earth,
48:54it could have collided
48:56with the Atlantic Ocean
48:58or the Pacific Ocean.
49:02And if it hit one of those places
49:04instead of Mexico,
49:06that event might not have been
49:08significant enough
49:10to actually be the end
49:12of the era of the dinosaurs.
49:14In fact, possibly
49:16the end of the world.
49:46.
49:48.