You probably know the broad outline of the story: 66 million years ago, a giant meteorite landed in what is now the Gulf of Mexico, and ended the dinosaurs. This year, various teams of scientists, working independently, helped fill in the picture of exactly what happened on that fateful day.

The biggest discovery was a site in North Dakota that preserved a jumble of fossilized fish and plant life that may have been thrown together by a tsunami on the very day of the meteorite strike. Closer to the impact site, scientists also cataloged a geological timeline of disasters that befell Earth that day. And researchers detailed evidence found in Europe that the Chicxulub event acidified the ocean in a flash, extinguishing much of Earth’s ocean life at the time.