I read an update recently to a story we wrote about in summer 2016 (“Drilling for Answers to Dinosaur Demise,” July 2016). Earlier that year, the International Ocean Discovery Program’s Expedition 364 set out with a lofty goal: get insights into the Chicxulub impact crater. What’s that? Let me catch you up.
Around 66 million years ago, a meteor roughly the size of Mount Everest struck near the tip of what we now call the Yucatan Peninsula. Literal hellfire and maybe some brimstone followed, and when the dust settled, about three-quarters of the life on Earth settled with it. This mass extinction ended the Cretaceous Period and, according to many experts who should know, the reign of the dinosaurs.