Heat-trapping asteroid dust may have incinerated the dinosaurs within hours

Scientists have spent decades debating what killed the dinosaurs. Some say volcanoes triggered the dinosaurs’ decline a million years before the infamous asteroid hit 66 million years ago. Others say the dinosaurs slowly starved after the asteroid’s impact generated a dust cloud so thick it blocked out the sun for months.

But land-dwelling dinosaurs may not have had time to starve. Many would have been incinerated by thermal radiation in the hours after impact, researchers report July 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences .

When the asteroid hit, it vaporized the surrounding rock, creating the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub…

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