How were scientists able to come to the (pretty much universally accepted) conclusion that it was a meteor that killed the dinosaurs when no one was around to witness it?

Question

Is it even remotely possible it was something else that happened around the same time?

In: 0

Answer 1

We didn’t see the event, but we’ve found some pretty big craters. Like the Chicxulub crater. At the same time (dating the crater and the extinctions), there’s fossil evidence of mass extinctions. And asteroid dirt in that layer of rock (elevated levels of metals found often in asteroids and meteors).

So it’s like walking into a room and seeing a bowl of soup splattered on the floor, then turning around and seeing your cat covered in soup. You didn’t need to see it happen to know with pretty great certainty your cat knocked the soup bowl off the table.