{"id":1327,"date":"2026-07-29T11:21:52","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:21:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=1327"},"modified":"2026-07-29T11:22:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T11:22:18","slug":"dinosaurs-were-killed-by-heat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/dinosaurs-were-killed-by-heat\/","title":{"rendered":"DINOSAURS WERE KILLED BY HEAT BY ASTEROID HIT????"},"content":{"rendered":"<header class=\"grid-col grid-col-12 tpl-article__layout tpl-article__layout--header \" data-test=\"article-header\">\n<h1 class=\"e-headline u-heading-1 \" data-test=\"headline\">Dinosaurs were roasted to death by asteroid dust cloud<\/h1>\n<p class=\"e-standfirst u-heading-4 \" data-test=\"standfirst\">Researchers say ejected dust acted like lid on a pot, trapping heat and \u2018charbroiling\u2019 anything that could not reach safety<\/p>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"grid-col grid-col-12 u-full-bleed u-full-bleed--reset-sm tpl-article__lead-asset \" data-lead-asset-layout=\"small\" data-test=\"article-lead-asset\">\n<figure class=\"article-body-image section\" data-js=\"article-body-image\" data-test=\"article-body-image\">\n<div class=\"article-body-image__container\"><picture class=\"picture--block \">\u00a0<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"article-body-image__source\" src=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/briefs\/2026\/07\/28\/TELEMMGLPICT000496743134_17852502711580_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqLfZdHPP_Jms68Nei_IBhrtHhMh81Y8GqX3ipA8YMo0k.jpeg?imwidth=640\" alt=\"Picture of a raptor dinosaur observing asteroid crashing to earth\" width=\"2500\" height=\"1558\" data-test=\"article-body-image-source\" \/> <\/picture><\/div><figcaption class=\"e-caption u-meta e-caption--has-separator e-caption--hide-small-screens \" data-js=\"caption\"><span data-test=\"caption\"> Dinosaurs that survived the asteroid crash were \u2018baked or fried\u2019 by the heat trapped underneath the resultant dust cloud <\/span> <span class=\"e-caption__credit\" data-test=\"credit\"> <span class=\"e-caption__credit-description\">Credit<\/span>: mikdam\/iStockphoto <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"grid-col grid-col-12 tpl-article__layout tpl-article__layout--content \">\n<div class=\" \" data-js=\"article-body\" data-test=\"tpl-article-body-recipe\">\n<div class=\"tpl-layout__mobile\">\n<div class=\"tpl-layout__mobile-byline\">\n<p><span class=\"e-byline e-byline--multi e-byline--article \" data-test=\"byline-wrapper\" data-track-wrapper=\"byline-author-link\"><span class=\"e-byline e-byline--multi \" data-test=\"byline\" data-js=\"show-more-wrapper\"><span class=\"e-byline__meta \" data-test=\"byline-meta\"><span class=\"e-byline__details \"><a class=\"e-byline__link \" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/authors\/s\/sa-se\/sarah-knapton\/\" rel=\"author\" aria-label=\"Sarah Knapton\" data-test=\"byline-link\" data-track-txt=\"txt\" data-track-destination=\"\/authors\/s\/sa-se\/sarah-knapton\/\">\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"article-dates\" data-test=\"article-dates\">\n<div class=\"article-dates__row\" data-test=\"article-dates-row\"><span class=\"article-dates__label\" data-test=\"date-label\">d <\/span> <time class=\"article-dates__time \" datetime=\"2026-07-28T16:52+0100\" data-test=\"time\">28 July 2026 4:52pm BST <\/time><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"articleBodyText section\">\n<div id=\"advert_tmg_nat_story_top\" class=\"js-advert advert js-advert-observed\" data-adtype=\"nat_story_top\"><iframe id=\"google_ads_iframe_\/6582\/tmg.telegraph.news\/news_4\" width=\"0\" height=\"0\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div class=\"component article-body-text \" data-test=\"article-body-text\">\n<p>Dinosaurs roasted to death in a hellish \u201coven\u201d created by superheated dust when <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2020\/11\/18\/dinosaurs-not-decline-asteroid-hit-earth-66-million-years-ago\/\">an asteroid hit Earth 66m years ago<\/a>, scientists believe.<\/p>\n<p>When the Everest-sized space rock <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/2022\/02\/23\/birds-crocodiles-survived-dinosaur-killing-asteroid-hit-earth\/\">hit the planet<\/a> at 45,000mph, it vaporised anything in its path and ignited landscapes within a 900-mile radius.<\/p>\n<p>But planetary scientists at Purdue University, in the United States, believe some <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/dinosaurs\/\">dinosaurs<\/a> may have survived had it not been for a suffocating cloud of ejected dust, which sat like a lid over Earth and prevented the blast heat from escaping into space.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Alexandria Johnson, an expert in atmospheric sciences, said: \u201cAnything that couldn\u2019t shelter itself somehow \u2013 underground or underwater \u2013 would have got baked or fried.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/world-news\/2024\/07\/01\/demise-of-dinosaurs-allowed-vines-to-thrive-find-scientists\/\">Chicxulub asteroid<\/a> sent more than 240 cubic miles of material into the atmosphere, some of which condensed into droplets of rock \u2013 spherules \u2013 which fell back to Earth, heating the air further.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"html-embed section is-loaded\" data-test=\"particle-embed\">\n<div id=\"wrp-17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd\" class=\"wrp-17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd part-wrp part-wrp-illustrator-embed\"><iframe id=\"17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd\" class=\"tmg-particle illustrator-embed wrp-17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd \" title=\"2907 The charbroil effect\" src=\"https:\/\/cf-particle-html.eip.telegraph.co.uk\/17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd.html?direct=true&amp;id=17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd&amp;template=cls&amp;preview-color-scheme=light\" name=\"17454889-2245-46e1-8fe3-65272e0af1fd\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" data-type=\"particle\" data-business-type=\"editorial\" data-mce-fragment=\"1\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"articleBodyText section\">\n<div class=\"component article-body-text \" data-test=\"article-body-text\">\n<p>Prof Brandon Johnson, of the department of Earth, atmospheric and planetary sciences at Purdue, said: \u201cWith the dust cloud trapping thermal radiation, it was like the surface and everything on it was being charbroiled \u2013 and that\u2019s what killed the dinosaurs and all the other animals.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not the blast wave from the impact or the fireball \u2013 those don\u2019t go very far. It\u2019s the global ejection of this vapour plume material that makes this a global extinction event.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWithout the dust cloud, it would have been bad. It would have killed a lot of creatures, but it wouldn\u2019t have been a planetary catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chicxulub impact near the Yucat\u00e1n Peninsula is believed to have killed about three-quarters of all living species, including most of the dinosaurs. Only the avian dinosaurs survived.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, experts believed the asteroid triggered giant tsunamis and created a cloud that blocked the sun for years, causing plummeting temperatures and killing plants that starved dinosaurs that ate vegetation. When the plant-eaters died, the meat-eaters also died.<\/p>\n<p>But the new study suggests that, for most animals, the apocalypse probably occurred much more quickly.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<figure class=\"article-body-image section\" data-js=\"article-body-image\" data-test=\"article-body-image\">\n<div class=\"article-body-image__container\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"e-caption u-meta e-caption--has-separator \" data-js=\"caption\"><span data-test=\"caption\"> The Chicxulub asteroid near the Yucatan Peninsula is believed have killed about three-quarters of all living species <\/span> <span class=\"e-caption__credit\" data-test=\"credit\"> <span class=\"e-caption__credit-description\">Credit<\/span>: Roger Harris\/Science Photo Library <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<div class=\"articleBodyText section\">\n<div class=\"component article-body-text \" data-test=\"article-body-text\">\n<p>Researchers calculated that the heat trapped by the fine dust meant the dinosaurs received a dose of thermal radiation 17 times more than the amount that would be lethal to humans.<\/p>\n<p>The intense heat was enough to ignite grass, pine needles, lichen and maybe even wood, causing widespread wildfires and turning Earth into a fiery oven from which only burrowing animals, and those in the sea, could escape.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt probably looked more like hell,\u201d said Prof Johnson. \u201cThe clouds would have blocked daylight so to any animal, like humans, that don\u2019t see far into the infrared, the surface would have probably looked dark.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scientists knew that the impact had melted rocks and sent detritus showering down to Earth because spherules have been found in the gills of paddlefish, which probably died on the day the asteroid hit.<\/p>\n<p>The spherules, about half the size of a grain of sugar, were made up of material of terrestrial origin \u2013 not from the asteroid itself, but almost certainly the deadly cloud that it created.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Johnson looked at the physical properties of these particles and the dust cloud as a whole to determine how it would have handled heat.<\/p>\n<p>She found the cloud layer was so impermeable that it trapped almost all of the heat from near the surface of the planet, the dust essentially acting like a lid on a pot, cooking Earth\u2019s inhabitants on the surface.<\/p>\n<p>The dust could have taken years, or even decades, to settle, and the particles themselves could have caused ongoing health problems for survivors.<\/p>\n<p>The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"martech-newsletter-unit martech-newsletter-unit--story martech-newsletter-unit--logged-out\" data-test=\"martech-newsletter-unit\">\n<div class=\"martech-newsletter-unit__container\">\n<div class=\"martech-newsletter-unit__content\">\n<p class=\"martech-newsletter-unit__desc martech-newsletter-unit__desc--no-margin\" data-test=\"martech-newsletter-unit-desc\">y morning<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dinosaurs were roasted to death by asteroid dust cloud Researchers say ejected dust acted like lid on a pot, trapping heat and \u2018charbroiling\u2019 anything that could not reach safety \u00a0 Dinosaurs that survived the asteroid crash were \u2018baked or fried\u2019 by the heat trapped underneath the resultant dust cloud Credit: mikdam\/iStockphoto \u00a0 d 28 July [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1327"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1329,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1327\/revisions\/1329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}