ExtinctZoo - The 24 Hours That Destroyed the Dinosaurs

Episode Date: August 9, 2026

How can a world go from wonderous giant reptiles, and sprawling forests to a desolate wasteland in just 24 hours? Find out hereeeee

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that lies within the Yukuton Peninsula and is big enough to fit the entire state of Massachusetts within it, while then also being deep enough that at the time of formation, you could have stacked multiple Burj Khalifas, the tallest building on the planet, inside of it, and still not see them poking out of the rim. Now it is just one, yet admittedly the most striking piece of evidence that exists, which proves that a devastating asteroid did in fact strike Earth during the late Cretaceous, ushering in a brand new age and bringing the ruling dinosaurs to their knees. And it doesn't take a genius to figure out that experiencing such an impact event

would have been a horrific and a once-in-a-lifetime event, literally and metaphorically. But that begs the question of, what would it really have been like for the dinosaurs? Those first 24 hours when the world suddenly went from lively and green, and home to the most wondrous creatures of all time, it suddenly dark and less lively. It almost seems like an impossible event transpired in just one day. But as you'll come to find out, this asteroid was not playing around. And this was abundantly clear before it even struck Earth, as the Chick-Shillube asteroid

was a mean old chunk of space rock, with roots from the outer solar system. Based on the crater's dimension, we believe that it would have been roughly the same size as Mount Everest. Yet, get this, much heavier, if that even seems possible, being bulkier, and composed heavily of carbonaceous chondrite, a carbon-rich stony material dominated by both silicate rocks and metals, including eridium and platinum, which gave this thing some, serious mass, as in possibly trillions of tons. But don't do worry, because this didn't stop it from being blistering fast either, as it tore through space at 20 kilometers or 12 miles per second, which for comparison is 10 times faster than the speed of a tank shell when it leaves the barrel.

And because of this, by the time it was around the moon's distance from Earth, the dinosaurs only at about 3 to 5 hours left of peace and being in charge, as even then, this was a world still ran by dinosaurs, with icons like the T-Rex, T-Rex, T-Ratops, Alamosaurus, and Inchalosaurus stomping around in North America. Additionally, people also tend to forget that these weren't the only giant reptiles lost. As in those days, giant giraffe-sized pterosaurs still dominated the skies, and giant marine reptiles prowled the depths all over the world. Yet, no matter where they were, what they were, or how big and formidable they were, nothing was safe from what was about to come. And I am sure for them that first hour came pretty fast, as rapidly the asteroid

continue to cut down a distance towards its final target, a shallow sea in the Gulf of Mexico, until finally, like a bullet, it struck, first slamming into our atmosphere hundreds of miles or kilometers above the surface. And though our atmosphere is extremely thin, the speed of which has slammed into it would have caused within the blink of an eye a blindingly bright light that would have appeared to any dinosaur who saw it as a new, yet far brighter, sun in the sky. While then on top of that, almost instantly a large plasma trail would have formed, which possibly produced lightning-like discharges and punched a hole straight through the sky. And for everything

below, there would be no time to process what was unfolding, as within just two more seconds, the asteroid touched down. And it was then, the gates of hell were truly ripped open. Within a fraction of a second, a massive fireball, hotter than the surface of the sun, formed, stretching out for hundreds of kilometers or miles, in vaporizing rock and creating superheated plasma as the energy of 10 billion Hiroshima nukes were unleashed all at once. And it goes without saying that, Anything caught in the superheated dome were simply no more. Dinosaurs, mountains, forests, you name it, poof. Gone like they never existed.

And it wasn't just what was caught in the actual fireball that instantly died, as the vast majority of animals within a 1,000 kilometer or 621 mile radius, would have still felt lethal heat from the thermoblast, possibly seeing temperatures nearly four times greater than the oven's hottest setting, burning their flesh like it was made in matches and igniting everything around them. Not that they were alive long enough to witness that, though. And even beyond this point, 30-degree burns would have been widespread across much of central, north, and South America, with places even as far as Colorado, experiencing a thermal pulse hot enough to ignite wildfires.

And though we aren't even past the first few seconds of impact, essentially everything in Mexico, Central America, and Southeast USA, is now either already dead or dying, at least if they had been caught out in the open. And for anything lucky, or perhaps unlucky enough, to have been shielded from the thermal pulse, they were soon about to get acquainted with the asteroid anyways, As along with exploding in brilliant fashion, the impact sent huge amounts of kinetic energy coursing through the planet like an enormous hammer, creating destructive seismic waves unlike anything humanity has ever felt, with the impact likely causing a massive magnitude 10-11

earthquake. So, in other words, an earthquake that is just, you know, 10 to 100 times more powerful than the most powerful earthquake ever recorded on human instruments. And these deadly seismic waves would have moved surprisingly fast, reaching places like Canada within minutes. while then even the opposite side of the world probably felt them in under an hour. Like any earthquake, the closer you were to the epicenter, the stronger the effects you would have felt, with large swathes of the Western Hemisphere, experiencing massive landslides,

coastal collapses, and the ground moving violently enough to literally throw multi-tonned animals from their feet, which for many large dinosaurs could have been a death sentence in itself, as it could have been unable to get back up, nursing possibly broken bones and injuries. And this shaking was so powerful that in places like the tannist formation of North Dakota, which lays over 1,900 miles from the actual impact site, we see evidence of the western interior seaway, so, in other words, a literal sea, experiencing saceous, which in layman terms meant that it would have been sloshing around like a swimming pool

in an earthquake, which consequently would have been deadly for many things in the water, and immediately around it, as it would have sent towering waves spilling forward. And though slower than both the thermal pulse and seismic waves, something else is now making its way across the surface, just seconds after the explosion, a powerful air blast. As the asteroid had struck the surface, the rapidly expanding fireball it had created didn't only consume what was in its path, it also essentially slammed into the surrounding atmosphere, violently shoving it outwards. And this massive displacement of air, in turn compressed into a fast-moving wall of high pressure,

that in the immediate strike zone traveled out at speeds in excess of 1,000 kilometers per hour or 600 miles per hour. So in other words, fast enough to easily flatten skyscrapers in concrete structures, if there had been any. Obviously, though, in this case, what ended up getting flattened was about, bunch of plants, dinosaurs, and other animals were likely literally stripped the bone and violently dismembered by the extreme pressure. And while this is overkill, you should also know that the air blast would have been superheated at first too. Now as the blast wave gradually traveled further, it did start to slow down, but don't get it twisted because it still retained a shocking amount of power, moving at hundreds of miles or kilometers per hour and reaching places like northern Florida

in about half an hour, flattening every forest in its way. And it wasn't until the air blast reached places like the Carolinas or Southern Central America that had finally slowed down to more gale or hurricane-like speeds, which mind you would have still caused widespread damage, albeit a bit more survivable. And ultimately, dinosaurs even farther away, or those who lived on the other side of the planet, would not end up experiencing this powerful air blast in the sense that it could have killed them, even though many would still hurt it, and it would technically continue to travel around the globe in the coming hours and days, and in fact not just once, but instead making multiple round trips. However, wild creatures on the opposite side of the planet would have been

oblivious to the lethal air blast, what they did definitely feel was another violent and much more rapid effect of the impact that occurred within the first hour, and was arguably the biggest killer of all, and that was the ejecta. You see, as this giant superheated ball had pummeled Earth, it excavated a lot of material, let's say, and when I say lots, I mean the trillion tons of gas and rocks a lot, essentially ejecting material equivalent to the weight of tens of thousands of heavier than the city of New York. And while some of this ejecta shot out sideways, blanketing the surrounding area, the vast majority of it skyrocketed upwards back from where the asteroid came. Some of this vaporized material even exited the

scene so fast that it made it halfway towards the moon and a bit even escaped Earth's orbit. But a lot of it only briefly left the atmosphere. And as you may have learned in class, what goes up must come down. And within just a few minutes after impact, the fastest moving ballistics would have already started to re-enter the atmosphere. And just like any man-made ship returning to Earth, that stuff came down fast and hot. And when you're talking about billings of rocks raining back down, you get a problem you don't really see with a shuttle re-entry. And that's that the sky itself heated up.

Kind of like how when you stand in a hot shower, even if you're not directly under the water, you still feel the heat. Only, instead of hot water drops, it was instead molten and vaporized rock, leading to a thermal pulse that engulfed the entire planet. Yet, this effect wasn't instant. We're not talking about a lamp that was suddenly switched on and everything starts burning up, no, instead this ejecta and thermal pulse moved across Earth like a wave, with places farther away being able to experience normal weather for a tad bit longer.

But, just like the earthquakes, it didn't take that long for the heat to move, as even at the impact's antipode, meaning the furthest point on the planet away from touchdown, it's believed that the ejecta would have started raining down within the hour, maybe even slightly less. And with it, the opposite side of Earth would burn just the same, as the re-entered this material basically turned the outside into a giant lethal sauna. with the heat being comparable to an oven set on broil mode. So in other words, hot enough to ignite flammable material and bake animals. Ready to take your investing knowledge to pro-level?

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or giant like a sarapod, everything caught is burning. And as one researcher put it, this thermal pulse was equivalent to a one-meaton nuke going off every four miles across the entire planet. And while it's not conclusive, some models suggest this horrific baking of the atmosphere lasted for around an hour, possibly more, yet obviously the temperatures fluctuated over the course of this time.

And this thermal pulse didn't just directly kill scores of creatures across the planet who were caught out in the open. It also created massive wildfires that likely engulfed 70% of the world's forests. And these fires wouldn't last for hours, even days, enraged with unprecedented ferocity, its all-exposed vegetation burned, suffocating life within forests or simply outright engulfing them in flames. And these fires wouldn't have been any old regular forest fires either, as given just how intense they were, much of the blazes would have transformed into firestorms,

which are large uncontrollable fires that create and feed their own weathering patterns and powerful winds, which can lead to things like fire tornadoes being common. Yeah, tornadoes of fire being common. So just to briefly recap, within the first hour alone, the asteroid had decimated the entire planet through the initial explosion, thermal radiation, a powerful air blast, mega earthquakes, and then vaporized molten ejecta, which turned the earth into one giant oven. And as the second hour unwinded, things would only continue to be chaotic, despite some of the violent effects coming to a close, like the air blast. Meanwhile, the fires and storm winds

would keep doing their thing, and already at this point you'd notice that the air had become choked and darkened by all the ash, gas, and soot that had been released. And though the worst of the thermal pulse might have passed as well, you would have still had higher up ejecta continue raining down slowly upon the world, as about 25% of it would have settled over the first couple of hours, but it would take a whole eight hours to get to a point for more than half of it had settled. And at this stage, we've essentially entered the slower destruction phase of the asteroid's impact, with it slowly chipping away it, what remained, with that remaining amount, probably not doing too well at this point. Yet with all of this said,

one of the most energetic effects that was slower than the rest, but still ongoing, even hours later, were the tsunamis. Now remember, while a mind-boggling amount of land had been vaporized upon impact, the asteroid did ultimately slam into a shallow sea, and as such, it, along with the mega-quakes that created, displaced a massive amount of water, forming megastomies that would have decimated the coasts of Earth. And just like the other aspects of the asteroid, the wave was by far the craziest at the beginning of the collision, with the immediate crater formation, creating a wall of water that was nearly four times the height of the Empire State Building, which for a comparison, the deadliest tsunami in human history, the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, only at a max height of 30 meters

or 100 feet, and he had killed over 200,000 people. And so when this wall of death slammed the Gulf of Mexico, it shredded through anything on its path. While in areas bordering the Gulf, the waves would have been closer to 100 meters or 300 feet tall, still absolutely massive, and would have traveled inland for miles, killing scores of marine life that were at first better shielded from the initial blasts and earthquakes. And though it was only closer to the crater that animals would have experienced waves taller than skyscrapers, distant coastlines would still get a drink from this soon-to-be global tsunami, as while the height of the waves greatly diminished over distance, it retained a boatload of energy. No pun intended, with the wave being approximately

six miles thick, so three times the width of Manhattan and carrying energy 30,000 times greater than what was seen in the 2004 tsunami that I mentioned earlier. So yeah, we are talking about a truly massive wave. However, compared to some of the other calamities seen in this event, the tsunami did move much slower, crossing the ocean at speeds roughly comparable to that of a jetliner, while the waves would have slowed even more as they approached the shore. And as such it took longer than the quakes or ejecta to spread, with it being believed that it took the tsunami around an hour to fully clear the Gulf, and over the next 24 hours would make its way across the Pacific, slamming into Europe and Western Africa.

While then, thanks to a gap between North and South America, it also created a tsunami that propagated throughout the Atlantic, reaching to the shores of Australia by day's end. And in these farther areas, the waves could have been as tall 10 to 20 meters or 33 to 65 feet, and would have still caused considerable damage. And we know this for sure, as in Antarctica, researchers found that the sea. the collections of a large amount of fossilized marine animals that seemingly died in a violent fashion and at the same time, suggesting that even in places like this, marine ecosystems and coastal environments were shredded apart. And ultimately time-wise, it would take 48 hours

for this global tsunami to fully circle the planet. The strength and intensity seen in the tsunami also meant that in many areas across the planet, especially closer to ground zero, giant waves and tsunami-like conditions would have likely persisted for hours as things try to return to normal. And if you somehow have survived this, this, and everything else thrown at the planet in the first few hours, you could also expect to start dealing with the aftershocks from the megacquake around this time, and I wouldn't expect the Earth to pull any punches in this regard either. As in general, aftershocks from an earthquake can be just one magnitude less than the main

event, meaning if this earthquake had truly been in 11, simply the aftershocks could have been stronger than any earthquake in recorded history, coming in at a magnitude of 10. Additionally, not only do you get stronger aftershocks with more powerful earthquakes, you also get more frequent ones, which in this case would a number in the thousands, and for the rest of the day they would continue to shake the planet and its few survivors to the core. And though I am focusing more on the first day, these afterchalks really do demonstrate the insane energy released in this extinction. As seismic activity from this event would potentially continue to linger for thousands of years. Now long-term future aside, over

the following hours, the survivors of Earth would start seeing other changes develop as well. The large forest fires would continue to eat await Earth's vegetation, causing the sky to slowly turn into a uniformed red glow, and dark in his ash, dust, and more spread across the world blocking up large amounts of sunlight. And while the air was no longer broiling hot, it would have still been unbearably hot around most of the planet, and in some places likely remained lethal for multiple hours, perhaps even longer. And one spot that imagined us to be the case, and somewhere I definitely would not want to be anywhere near, was the crater, as despite the asteroid now being no more, the crater remained the most volatile spot on Earth. Contrary

of popular beliefs, it wasn't just turned into a giant pit of volcanic lava. Rather, it was instead a large melt sheet of varying materials, that was very likely steamy, glowing, and a varying thickness throughout the crater. While then for hours, the crater would have seemed alive as its wall started to collapse and large amounts of rock rushed back inward. And not so long after, rock would be joined by water, as the sea also began to reclaim the crash site, with the tsunami and waves bouncing back into it, creating large violent steam explosions and hydrothermal activity. And though the top surface of the impact site likely cooled and crusted fairly quickly, once water had resubmed the site, deep below it was a different story,

as things would stay heated for a while, far past the first day, with some models even estimating that it would take up to 8 million years for the site below this crusted surface to cool down, which is just yet another testament to how violent the space rock truly was. Now, what you wouldn't have to wait millions of years for, though, was another aspect of this asteroid that most people tend to overlook, which is, because of the earthquakes and the Earthquakes, the initial shock, you don't just get rock and water being forcefully moved around.

Everything is given a good shakedown. And that includes every single volcano on the planet, be that on land or underwater. And we already know that even now, earthquakes can trigger volcanic eruptions. And so the same process obviously applies to back then as well. Obviously it is hard to tell just how much volcanic activity the asteroid triggered, but let's just say it surely would have caused some. So basically, any dinosaur who survived the initial first few hours who are now wandering, for this burnt wasteland, wouldn't need to just worry about lingering fires, smoke, tsunamis,

aftershocks, and finding scarce, viable resources, they'd also now have to be weary about a volcano exploding in their face. And given the fantastic visibility with all the smoke, ash, and soot in the sky, they probably wouldn't even have a chance to see it coming. So I hope by now it's starting to become a little evident as to just how a space rock really could kill all the non-avian dinosaurs, and in a very rapid manner at that, as by the end of the first 24 hours, the majority of them were super dead, as well as scores of marine life and others. Because you can't forget, it wasn't just the non-avian dinosaurs who went extinct. The Earth lost over 75% of all of its marine and terrestrial species, not just dinosaurs. And for those oh-so-very-few survivors, the ordeal was far from over.

Because even though the Cretaceous extinction is known for being quick and brutal compared to other extinction events, it still extended well past one day. And that, my friends, is when you see a new killer emerge. The so-called nuclear-like apocalyptic. winter, wherein all that material that blocked out the sun, lower temperatures around the planet and prevented organisms from completing photosynthesis, leading to wide-scale food chain collapses even in communities that at first were well protected. Now we don't know how long this winter ended up lasting, but recent estimates suggest that it was a duration of years, possibly over a decade of just sadness, darkness, and withering

away. Yet truthfully, I'd rather spend years in this post-astroid world than have to endure those first 24 hours. Thanks for watching and until next time. on Extinct Zoo.