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

To directly address the “witness” part; we don’t necessarily need to witness something to be able to determine it happened. If you find a circle of stones with ash in it, you can pretty confidently say someone built a campfire there, even though you weren’t there to see them do it.

Pretty much the same applies here. There’s various bits of evidence that all say it was an asteroid. There’s an impact crater with the right age, and enough energy was required to form it that it would have done the job. IIRC, the red a very obvious layer of iridium dust at the same time over the vast majority of the Earth’s surface, which is also an effect of asteroid impacts.