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  • Imagine you're a dinosaur, let's say an Alamosaurus,

  • around 66 million years ago.

  • The sun has set and you're minding your own business,

  • just lumbering around an area that will eventually

  • be called Austin, Texas, when something glowing in the sky

  • catches your eye.

  • You're not too concerned, but you keep an eye

  • on that weird glowing star for a couple of hours anyway.

  • The thing is, that star keeps getting brighter,

  • but it doesn't seem to be moving, so you forget about it.

  • Then out of nowhere, around 60 hours later,

  • you feel the thunderous boom of a supersonic shock wave.

  • That thing you hoped might be a routine shooting star

  • is actually an asteroid around 6 miles wide--

  • 6 miles wide.

  • Before you can even think "what the hell was that?"

  • the thing you thought was a star 60 hours ago plunges

  • 18 miles into the Earth, and you die immediately.

  • Today we're going to do a step by step

  • breakdown of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

  • But before we get started, now is a great time

  • to subscribe to our channel, "Weird History."

  • Leave a comment and let us know what you think about this video

  • or tell us what weird phenomenon or person

  • you'd like us to cover next.

  • Now, onto the disastrous event which some scientists say

  • nearly demolished Earth before it even really had a chance

  • to make it as a planet.

  • The Chicxulub asteroid slammed onto the coast of Mexico

  • and killed just about everything on Earth.

  • The first thing Earth felt before the Chicxulub asteroid

  • struck was its violent shock wave.

  • Because the air in front of the asteroid

  • was compressed and unbelievably hot,

  • it blasted a hole through the Earth's atmosphere,

  • causing the mother of all shock waves.

  • Naturally, ground zero absorbed the asteroid shock wave first

  • with a sudden spike in air pressure, which

  • ruptured lungs and other internal organs of every living

  • creature within a 1500 mile radius.

  • But that wasn't even the worst of it.

  • Not long after you, the leaf-eating Alamosaurus

  • died from the pulverizing shock wave,

  • the 6-mile wide asteroid plunged onto the shore of what we now

  • refer to as the Yucatan Peninsula, which is

  • about 200 miles west of Cancun.

  • Immediately after the asteroid-- which, by the way,

  • vaporized upon impact--

  • smashed into the rim of the Gulf of Mexico,

  • the Earth rebounded from the impact

  • and the peak of its crust briefly

  • rose higher than Mount Everest before it broke apart and fell

  • back to sea level.

  • The energy produced from the impact of the explosion

  • was equivalent to 100 trillion tons of TNT,

  • roughly 7 billion times as powerful

  • as the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

  • But the blast didn't look like the kind

  • of atomic explosion you're familiar with-- you know,

  • the all too-familiar mushroom cloud.

  • Instead, the impact looked more like a rooster tail made up

  • of molten material.

  • A lot of the molten debris was several times hotter

  • than the surface of the sun, and it set fire to everything

  • within 1,000 miles.

  • What molten debris?

  • Good question.

  • Once the asteroid hit Earth, the force

  • kicked back 25 trillion metric tons of rock ash

  • and shot debris into the Earth's atmosphere.

  • An inverted cone of liquefied molten rock

  • shot up into the sky.

  • The heat turned the molten rock into little red hot beads

  • of glass.

  • Scientists call them tektites, and after they

  • reached the peak of their trajectory,

  • they began falling back down to Earth

  • at 100 to 200 miles per hour.

  • Jan Smit, a retired professor of sedimentary geology

  • from Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands,

  • who is considered the world expert on tektites,

  • studied the North Dakota fossil site

  • and says the fish got it the worst from the tektites

  • found there.

  • "Paddlefish swim through the water

  • with their mouths open, gaping, and in this net,

  • they catch tiny particles, food particles,

  • in their gill rakers, and then they swallow, like a whale

  • shark or a baleen whale.

  • They also caught tektites.

  • That by itself is an amazing fact.

  • That means that the first direct victims of the impact

  • are these accumulations of fishes."

  • Smit also noted that the buried body

  • of a Triceratops and a duck-billed hadrosaur

  • proves beyond a doubt that dinosaurs were still

  • alive at the time of impact.

  • It's theorized that it rained the very same tektites

  • for nearly an hour, and set everything that

  • came in contact with on fire.

  • While the tektites were busy setting fire to the Earth,

  • the heaving ocean turned into a towering tsunami

  • tearing up coastlines, sometimes peeling up

  • hundreds of feet of rock, pushing debris inland,

  • and then sucking it back out into deep water.

  • Less than 10 minutes after impact,

  • a 30-foot wave pounced on what we now

  • know as fossil site North Dakota, nicknamed Tanis

  • after the lost ancient Egyptian city.

  • The wave threw thousands of fish onto a sandbar,

  • trapping them as the water receded.

  • They struggled to breathe, but their gills

  • were clogged with tektites, essentially suffocating them.

  • Approximately 20 minutes after the asteroid's impact,

  • a second wave reached North Dakota's fossil site,

  • burying the beached fish under a pile of gravel, sand, and dirt.

  • The massive disruption created a fossilized graveyard.

  • The fossils show fish topped on top of each other

  • with scorched tree trunks, insects, part of a Triceratops,

  • and mammals.

  • The lucky dinosaurs died upon the impact of the asteroid.

  • The dinosaurs that lived had a rough couple of months.

  • Debris from both the asteroid's impact in the Western

  • Hemisphere and volcanic activity in the Eastern Hemisphere

  • blocked out the sun's light.

  • The plants that survived impact died from lack of light.

  • Without any vegetation, surviving herbivores

  • succumbed to starvation, and the carnivores quickly followed.

  • Scientists have hypothesized the mass extinction

  • eliminated 75% of all species and wiped out

  • 99.9999% of all living organisms.

  • For many years after, the Earth was toxic.

  • Due to the asteroid's heat and impact,

  • many minerals vaporized and released dangerous gases

  • into the atmosphere, including greenhouse gases,

  • such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and methane.

  • One of the more immediately damaging effects,

  • however, was from sulfur.

  • Sulfur was introduced into the water cycle,

  • creating sulfuric acid and causing subsequent acid rain.

  • About 45 minutes after impact, a thunderous blast of wind

  • would tear through ground zero at 600 miles an hour,

  • blasting debris everywhere and leveling anything

  • that might still be standing.

  • The sound of the explosion would arrive

  • at the same time, around 105 decibels,

  • about as loud as if you were standing underneath the rotors

  • of a Huey helicopter.

  • For the first few hours, there would have

  • been close to total darkness.

  • But soon after that, the sky would begin to lighten.

  • For anyone or anything out of range

  • of the direct effects of the asteroid explosion,

  • one would be treated to the sight of dark skies

  • and a display of shooting stars created by the impact

  • debris raining back on Earth.

  • They wouldn't have looked quite like regular shooting stars

  • or meteors though.

  • Meteors burn up at higher speeds and get hotter.

  • These shooting stars would have been re-entering the atmosphere

  • at lower altitudes, traveling slower and emitting

  • infrared radiation.

  • The best guess is that the atmosphere would have

  • been some sort of red glow.

  • After the red glow, the sky would darken as ash

  • and debris swirling around the globe

  • created a creeping twilight.

  • During the following weeks, months, and maybe even years,

  • the skies were probably somewhere between twilight

  • and a very cloudy day.

  • Once the dust literally settled, one

  • of the more distinctive clues that the asteroid left

  • us was a thick layer of clay packed