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Comment by joshmarinacci | Hacker News Reader

Finding the impact crater pretty much cemented it. It absolutely happened. The remaining questions are around if the impact was enough to trigger the extinction on its own or if other factors compounded the problem.

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There's a strong case to be made that the impact not only was enough to trigger the extinction, it happened in 1 day. The theory is that the ejecta from the impact was voluminous enough that it was sent into space and then spread around the Earth. On reentry it heated the atmosphere to thousands of degrees. So animals in New Zealand that likely didn't even feel the impact died when the air was too hot to breath. The only survivors were things in burrows or nests or under water.

> The remaining questions are around if the impact was enough to trigger the extinction

Well, in the sense that we can never be sure of anything, yeah. But it not being enough is a really extraordinary idea.

I believe the main question here is that whether they were doomed without asteroid regardless, and in that sense we can’t blame asteroid alone or primarily.

Oh, yes, the point on the asteroid alone is possible, but a mass extinction at the same time an asteroid nearly destroys the wold being mainly caused by something other is a hell of a coincidence.

Not actually that big of coincidence. We tend to forgot the scale of these things. I remember reading that dinosaurs were already in decline for 2-3 million years. So if asteroids like that hit once per 100 million years, odds are not that small. Maybe 3% give or take.

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