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The main link to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, however, comes from the fossilized remains of two fish and particles frozen in time in resin.
This is because the fish — a sturgeon and an oarfish — have small particles in their gills that have come from the crater in Yucatan, the paleontologists concluded after a chemical and radiological analysis. With the asteroid impact on Earth, the molten rock particles were expelled towards space. And their cooling and solidification, as they rose in the atmosphere, would give rise to a ‘rain’ of rock particles from the crater. These will have fallen into an old river where the fish would be, ending up being ‘aspirated’, through their gills.
If the fossilized remains of extinct dinosaurs is in itself a very important find, the archaeologists from Tanis may have won the jackpot when they found two resin particles preserved in time, with small inclusions that could belong to the asteroid itself.
When we noticed that there were inclusions inside these little glass spheres, we analyzed them chemically with an X-ray near Oxford.” “We were able to deconstruct its chemistry and identify the composition of the material. All the evidence, all the chemical data from the study strongly suggests that we are talking about some of the material that caused the impact, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.”
Regarding the pterosaur embryo, it was analyzed using X-ray tools, which made it possible to map the bones of the dinosaur offspring. These were then virtually assembled to reconstruct the Pterosaur skeleton.which would belong to the Azhdarchid group — dinosaurs that could reach a wingspan, spread wings, of more than ten meters.
For Paul Berrett, of the Museum of Natural History, the leg of Thescelosaurus appears to have been abruptly torn from the animal, but not by a predator.
It looks like the leg was just ripped off too quickly. There is no evidence of disease, no obvious pathologies, no marks of having been attacked by scavengers, such as bite marks or pieces that could have disappeared,” she explained. “So the best idea we have is that this animal died more or less instantly.”
Steve Brusatte, from the University of Edinburgh — more skeptical of establishing a link between the cause of death and the asteroid — believes that it may be possible, for example, to that the animal died before the asteroid impact, but that its leg was unearthed by the shock wave of the falling celestial body, then returned to be preserved on earth. The scientist will therefore wait for the publication and review of the new data obtained from the Tanis site, he told the BBC.
Brusatte prefers to look at this archaeological discovery for its importance for the study of the species found, and not for its direct relationship to the asteroid that hit Earth 66 million years ago.
The Pterosaur egg with the hatchling inside is super rare, there was nothing like it in North America. Not everything has to be about the asteroid.”
The British channel spent three years filming a program on location that will air on April 15, and which will feature narration by Sir David Attenborough. In May, the latest data from the archaeological discovery will be presented to the General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union.
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