A giant comet that ‘pinballed’ off Jupiter then slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs – not an asteroid, a team of astronomers claim.
Researchers from Harvard University looked at the mechanics of the solar system, including comets in the Oort cloud and their movements over millions of years.
They found that a significant proportion of objects from this icy region of the solar system can be ‘bumped off course’ by Jupiter’s gravitational field and hit the Earth.
This is what they believed happened 66 million years ago when the ‘Chicxulub impactor’ created a 94-mile wide and 12-mile deep crater off the coast of Mexico, killing the dinosaurs and about three quarters of all life on Earth at the time.
Previously scientists assumed this was an asteroid, but the the Harvard team found an Oort cloud comet orbit would have coincided with the Chicxulub impact.