On a spring day 55 million years ago, a 7.5-mile-wide asteroid struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, triggering a global calamity that erased about three-quarters of Earth's species, including the dinosaurs. Now, researchers at a site in North Dakota called the Tanis deposit have examined of bones from three paddlefishes and three sturgeons that died within about 30 minutes of the impact that occurred 2,200 miles away. “Every living thing in Tanis that day saw nothing coming and was killed almost instantaneously," said Melanie During, a paleontology doctoral student. During compared the fossils deposited at Tanis to "a car crash frozen in place."/p>
NCPA
