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The impact of the meteorite caused huge dust and smoke clouds that blotted out the sun.
As a result, plants could no longer grow.
The Chicxulub Crater could be evidence of a meteorite collision
that brought the age of dinosaurs to an end.
Creatures that survived the disaster—which included many insects, amphibians, and mammals—continued evolving.
The end of the dinosaurs
The age of the dinosaurs came to a sudden end. The most likely explanation is that the impact of a massive meteorite at the
end of the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, caused the dinosaurs’ extinction.
The crater the meteorite created is in Mexico and traces of it can still be seen today. It wasn’t just the dinosaurs that perished;
some three-quarters of all plant and animal species died out, making this one of the largest extinction events in Earth’s
history. But with the disappearance of the dinosaurs, mammals—including, eventually, humans—had their chance to evolve.
