Scientists hail the site as the world's first definitive link between the asteroid crash and the death of dinosaurs

A team of paleontologists from Texas has discovered a treasure trove of fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures that died minutes after an enormous asteroid plunged into Earth millions of years ago.

In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a leading science journal, a team of scientists from the University of Kansas say they uncovered a “motherlode of exquisitely preserved animal and fish fossils,” near Bowman, North Dakota.

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Some of the fish fossils within the horde were found to have inhaled “ejecta” from the cosmic explosion, connecting the trove with the Chicxulub crater — buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico — created by the impact of the asteroid.

Researchers believe the impact prompted a massive seismic upheaval, triggering a torrent of water and debris from an inland sea that cut through North America at the time — known as the Western Interior Seaway. The presence of “ejecta” suggests the seismic surges reached North Dakota within ‘tens of minutes’, sweeping sea creatures inland and entombing them with other forms of landlocked life.

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At the fossil site – called Tanis in North Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation – the surge left “a tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures,” according to Robert DePalma, the report’s lead author.

Photo by Robert DePalma / Kansas University / AFP

The upheaval left a “tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures,” said DePalma Tektites — tiny spheres of clay and glass — were also found within the fossil bed, from the impact.

“The sedimentation happened so quickly everything is preserved in three dimensions – they’re not crushed,” co-author David Burnham told The Guardian. “It’s like an avalanche that collapses almost like a liquid, then sets like concrete. They were killed pretty suddenly because of the violence of that water. We have one fish that hit a tree and was broken in half.”

Scientists say the site offers the closest snapshot of events from the day the asteroid hit the Earth, offering the “full nature of the extent of biotic disruptions that took place” and hails the discovery as the world’s first to connect the cosmic event with the end of the dinosaur age.

“We look at moment-by-moment records of one of the most notable impact events in Earth’s history. No other site has a record quite like that,” said DePalma.