Rocks discovered from the day the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth

Rocks from the most pivotal moment in Earth's history were discovered offshore of the Yucatan Peninsula, according to a study released Monday.

The finding is "the most detailed look yet into the aftermath of the catastrophe that ended the Age of Dinosaurs," said study lead author Sean Gulick, a research professor at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics.

When the asteroid smashed into the Earth 66 million years ago, the impact ignited wildfires, triggered tsunamis and blasted so much sulfur into the atmosphere that it blotted out the sun, which caused the global cooling that killed off the dinosaurs.

The study found hard evidence of this scenario in the hundreds of feet of rocks that filled the impact crater within the first 24 hours after the strike.

"It's an expanded record of events that we were able to recover from within 'ground zero,' " said Gulick, who co-led a scientific drilling mission that retrieved the rocks from the impact site in 2016. "It tells us about impact processes from an eyewitness location."

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Scientists found melted and broken rocks such as sandstone, limestone and granite – but no sulfur-bearing minerals, despite the area's high concentration of sulfur-containing rocks. This finding suggests that the impact vaporized these rocks, forming sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere and causing cooling on the global scale.

Researchers estimate the asteroid hit with the equivalent power of 10 billion atomic bombs of the size used in World War II. The blast ignited trees and plants that were thousands of miles away and triggered a massive tsunami that reached as far inland as Illinois.

Jay Melosh, a Purdue University professor and expert on impact cratering, who was not involved in the study, said the research helps scientists know that their understanding of the asteroid impact is on the right track.

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"It was a momentous day in the history of life, and this is a very clear documentation of what happened at ground zero," he said.

The asteroid impact and resulting mass extinction, which scientists call the K-T boundary, marked the end of the Cretaceous Era. The aftereffects of that infamous asteroid collision killed 75% of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

It's the planet's most recent mass extinction.

Monday's study was published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Rocks discovered from the day the dinosaurs died 66 million years ago