IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v449y2007i7158d10.1038_nature06070.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An asteroid breakup 160 Myr ago as the probable source of the K/T impactor

Author

Listed:
  • William F. Bottke

    (Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St, Suite 300, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA)

  • David Vokrouhlický

    (Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St, Suite 300, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA
    Institute of Astronomy, Charles University, V Holešovičkách 2, 18000 Prague 8, Czech Republic)

  • David Nesvorný

    (Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St, Suite 300, Boulder, Colorado 80302, USA)

Abstract

The terrestrial and lunar cratering rate is often assumed to have been nearly constant over the past 3 Gyr. Different lines of evidence, however, suggest that the impact flux from kilometre-sized bodies increased by at least a factor of two over the long-term average during the past ∼100 Myr. Here we argue that this apparent surge was triggered by the catastrophic disruption of the parent body of the asteroid Baptistina, which we infer was a ∼170-km-diameter body (carbonaceous-chondrite-like) that broke up Myr ago in the inner main asteroid belt. Fragments produced by the collision were slowly delivered by dynamical processes to orbits where they could strike the terrestrial planets. We find that this asteroid shower is the most likely source (>90 per cent probability) of the Chicxulub impactor that produced the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) mass extinction event 65 Myr ago.

Suggested Citation

  • William F. Bottke & David Vokrouhlický & David Nesvorný, 2007. "An asteroid breakup 160 Myr ago as the probable source of the K/T impactor," Nature, Nature, vol. 449(7158), pages 48-53, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7158:d:10.1038_nature06070
    DOI: 10.1038/nature06070
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06070
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature06070?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:449:y:2007:i:7158:d:10.1038_nature06070. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.