The Birth Pains of Comet Chicxulub

The end of the dinosaurs and what may lie in wait on Jupiter's moons.

Comet Chicxulub was a runaway refugee from the outer asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Surely its orbit must have crossed paths with Earth several times before the cataclysmic collision 66 million years ago. I wonder if there was ever a giant salamander from the Carboniferous, who looked into the night sky and noticed the brightly glowing comets near approach, and wondered if it would come closer. 

The eventual collision was written in the stars. Some of the best before and after fossils of this catastrophic extinction event can be found in Hell Creek, Montana. Hell Creek possessed an ecosystem that had been stable for tens of millions of years before the comet struck. The botanical explosion known as the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution had left the valley full of flowering plants. The flowering plants could grow slightly faster than the massive herds of giant, lumbering Triceratops could graze. The T. Rex grazed upon the Triceratops. Even the dimmest Triceratops or T. Rex must have looked into the sky and noticed the rapidly approaching celestial object. Comet Chicxulub would have temporarily been the largest object in the sky, appearing far larger and brighter than the sun. As it neared our planet it would have been visible for shorter and shorter periods of time, obscured by the Earth’s rotation and its own proximity, reappearing a little larger each asteroid rise. 

The day the paths of Chicxulub and our home planet collided is probably the single worst day in the history of Earth. Chicxulub was roughly the size of Mount Everest and struck the earth at 67,000 miles per second. The force of the collision instantly pulverized the asteroid even as it plowed 25 miles beneath the surface. The impact left behind a crater 18 miles deep and 124 miles long off the coast of Yucatan. Any living creature within 600 miles of the impact was instantly vaporized. This all happened within seconds

Faster than wind, faster than sound, the dinosaurs in Hell Creek, Montana, would have seen a bright flash in the sky. The flash was so stunningly brilliant that it disoriented the giant beasts. The sky would have faded back to blue but without the burning comet in the sky. Then another flash of light followed, this one much more vengeful than the first. It would have been the last thing the dinosaurs ever saw, light so bright they were instantly blinded. 

Striking the ocean created tidal waves over a mile tall, some of them reaching as far as Kansas. Fossil skeletons of giant prehistoric marine reptiles such as plesiosaurs have been discovered far inland, tossed there by tsunami waves. The tidal waves would have rippled back and forth across the ocean for several weeks like water sloshing in a bathtub. 

The force of the impact buckled the earth. The sea floor rose and fell in waves as tall as the Empire State Building. The earthquake spread across continents, hillsides jiggling. As far away as Hell Creek, the quivering earth bounced thirty-ton Tyrannosaurs as if they were on trampolines.

A column of ejecta rose into the air. Tons of this material rose so high that it climbed above the atmosphere and left our planet forever. Some of this material floated across the solar system for millions of years before crashing on Mars, Jupiter, and their moons. Scientists believe it is highly likely that at least some of those interplanetary traveling rocks must have deposited living microbes on Mars, Jupiter and some of her moons.

Most of the debris did not escape the atmosphere. Much of it rained down from the heavens like rain except these were not raindrops. These were drops of molten stone, cooling slightly as they fell, tear shaped rocks still glowing hot. The closer you were to the impact site the heavier the rain of molten stones. In some places, the few surviving dinosaurs were gunned down by the liquid stones falling from the sky fast enough and hot enough to bore holes through their torsos.

As the falling molten stones fell from the sky heat was transferred to the atmosphere. The sky grew redder and redder, brighter and darker. The landscape became like an oven. Forests spontaneously combusted. Animals were roasted alive inside their skins. It is believed that the sky caught on fire. What do you breathe when the sky catches on fire?

Proximity to the crash site determined the extremity of each regions devastation. The forest fires in North America probably burned for weeks but the ones in the Southern Hemisphere may not have been as severe. Nearly all dinosaurs in North America were killed immediately but this was not true in Africa or Asia. Some populations of dinosaurs, even giant sauropods are thought to have survived the initial blast.

The secondary effect of our planet’s collision with the asteroid began to take effect soon after. Not all the dust kicked up by the interplanetary collision escaped into outer space nor did all the ejecta fall back to Earth as a rain of molten rock. Most of the dust in the atmosphere stayed in the atmosphere. The soot from the forest fires hung in the air as well. This dirty sky plunged Earth into a sort of nuclear winter and temperatures dropped dramatically. Without light for photosynthesis most botanical life expired. Most grazers perished of starvation shortly after that and the few remaining predators soon followed. In the end, dinosaurs were totally extinct

A few tiny creatures remained, most of them burrowers who could hide and hibernate. Slowly life rebuilt on planet Earth and tiny mammals prospered. As they evolved some of these creatures became rodents, but one branch of the family tree took a different turn—becoming primates. The primates, in turn, eventually led to human beings, the species writing and reading this essay.

But here’s the thing. As our species prepares to leave our planet and explore the rest of the solar system, it is entirely possible that when we reach the moons of Jupiter that we will discover a thriving, living ecosystem, of creatures whose DNA came from Earth herself—the ejecta from the collision between Chicxulub and our home world. The cataclysmic extinction event which wiped out most of life on Earth may have also seeded some of our solar system neighbors. Perhaps the K-2 asteroid caused extinction event was merely the typical birthing pains of life spreading across the universe. It has long been proposed that RNA, the building blocks of life, may have arrived at Earth by meteor, asteroid or comet, possibly in another cataclysmic event taking place so long ago we have yet to recognize it. 

Mankind has long asked the question, “Are we alone in the universe?” It could be that when we finally encounter extraterrestrial life it will be a long lost cousin cast off from Earth and made of our own DNA.

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Gary Every is an author, poet, and musician. You can find more of his work on his website. If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to Futurist Letters.