{"id":261662,"date":"2017-01-16T06:44:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-16T10:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?guid=938701aacb1f0fc962415bb69a2cff0c"},"modified":"2017-01-16T06:44:09","modified_gmt":"2017-01-16T10:44:09","slug":"how-the-darkness-and-the-cold-killed-the-dinosaurs-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/?p=261662","title":{"rendered":"How the darkness and the cold killed the dinosaurs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>66 million years ago, the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs started the ascent of the mammals, ultimately resulting in humankind&#8217;s reign on Earth. Climate scientists have now reconstructed how tiny droplets of sulfuric acid formed high up in the air after the well-known impact of a large asteroid, which blocked the sunlight for several years, and had a profound influence on life. Plants died, and death cascaded through the food web. Previous theories focused on the shorter-lived dust ejected by the impact. New computer simulations show that the droplets resulted in long-lasting cooling, a likely contributor to the death of land-living dinosaurs. An additional kill mechanism might have been a vigorous mixing of the oceans caused by the surface cooling, severely disturbing marine ecosystems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>66 million years ago, the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs started the ascent of the mammals, ultimately resulting in humankind&#8217;s reign on Earth. Climate scientists have now reconstructed how tiny droplets of sulfuric acid formed high up in the air a&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":615444,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-261662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=261662"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261662\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":261663,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/261662\/revisions\/261663"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/615444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=261662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=261662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spaceweekly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=261662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}