{"id":241115,"date":"2026-07-18T00:10:23","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T05:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/researchers-identify-class-of-oddball-meteorite-that-killed-the-dinosaurs"},"modified":"2026-07-18T00:10:23","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T05:10:23","slug":"researchers-identify-class-of-oddball-meteorite-that-killed-the-dinosaurs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/07\/researchers-identify-class-of-oddball-meteorite-that-killed-the-dinosaurs","title":{"rendered":"Researchers identify class of \u2018oddball\u2019 meteorite that killed the dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/researchers-identify-class-of-oddball-meteorite-that-killed-the-dinosaurs.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A rare CO chondrite meteorite was the probable impacter that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out 75% of Earth\u2019s species, including nonavian dinosaurs. These <a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1126\/sciadv.aef4858\" target=\"_blank\">findings<\/a> are published in <i>Science Advances<\/i>. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Paris, Brussels and Vienna, used advanced nickel isotope analysis of samples to narrow down the composition of the deadly Cretaceous-Paleogene meteorite.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cCarbonaceous chondrites of the Ornans class are definitely not like the typical meteors you find in museum collections,\u201d says Dr. Philippe Claeys, who worked on the study as a visiting professor at UBC.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA CO contains much less volatile elements\u2014like carbon, zinc, water and particularly sulfur\u2014than other classes of meteorites we\u2019ve discovered so far on Earth. It doesn\u2019t alter our theory of what caused the extinction event\u2014but it makes it less likely that sulfur contained in the impacter was the smoking gun. The fine debris thrown into the atmosphere would have been the primary factor.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A rare CO chondrite meteorite was the probable impacter that struck Earth 66 million years ago, wiping out 75% of Earth\u2019s species, including nonavian dinosaurs. These findings are published in Science Advances. Researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Paris, Brussels and Vienna, used advanced nickel isotope analysis of samples to narrow down the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,32,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asteroid-comet-impacts","category-education","category-existential-risks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}