K/T extinction event

The intermediate claystone layer contains 1000 times more iridium than the upper and lower layers. It is the boundary between Cretaceous and Tertiary Periods. The rock is from Wyoming, USA.
This image of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula show a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater. Most scientists agree that this impact was the main cause of the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction.
Deccan Plateau

The CretaceousTertiary extinction event, now called the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event,[1] was about 65.5 million years ago.[2] It may be called the K/T extinction event or K/Pg event for short. This is the famous event which killed most of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period.

It was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant species. The event marks the end of the Mesozoic era and the beginning of the Cainozoic era.[3][4]

  1. Because the term "Tertiary" is out of date.
  2. Renne, Paul R.; Deino, Alan L.; Hilgen, Frederik J.; Kuiper, Klaudia F.; Mark, Darren F.; Mitchell, William S.; Morgan, Leah E.; Mundil, Roland; Smit, Jan (2013). "Time scales of critical events around the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary" (PDF). Science. 339 (6120): 684–687. Bibcode:2013Sci...339..684R. doi:10.1126/science.1230492. PMID 23393261. S2CID 6112274. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-07. Retrieved 2018-11-14.
  3. Fortey R (1999). Life: A natural history of the first four billion years of life on Earth. Vintage. pp. 238–260.
  4. With "Tertiary" being discouraged as a formal time or rock unit by the International Commission on Stratigraphy, the K/T event is now called the Cretaceous–Palaeogene extinction event by many researchers. Gradstein F, Ogg J, Smith A. A geologic time scale 2004.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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