Some are calling it a "treasure trove" of evidence about the day the dinosaurs died.
A report made available on Friday by the prominent science journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said that an international team of 12 scientists discovered a bed of fossils in North Dakota that consists of remains of insects, fish, mammals, dinosaurs, and plants that appear to date to the very day a giant meteor crashed into the Earth off the coast of modern-day Mexico 66 million years ago.
The impact of the meteor infamously launched a series of firestorms that eventually led to the destruction of a significant amount of life on Earth at the time, including dinosaurs, allowing for mammals to emerge as the planet's dominant land megafauna. The discovery of the fossils reportedly represents "unparalleled" evidence of the repercussions of the meteor.
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Per Science Daily, the "unique, fossilized graveyard" consists of fish stacked on top each other mixed in with burned trees, bones of prehistoric sea creatures like mosasaurs, insects, and a partial carcass of a Triceratops.
"This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary," the team's lead researcher Robert DePalma said, using the geological term designated for the end of the Cretaceous Period. "At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day."
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