Palaeontology

Dinosaur-killing asteroid created a subterranean haven for life

By T.K. Randall
June 11, 2026

Image Credit: Don Davis / NASA 66 million years ago, an enormous 10km-wide space rock slammed into the Earth, causing global devastation and wiping out most of the species on Earth, including the dinosaurs.

But there was an unexpected silver lining created by the impact that scientists are only now discovering - a subterranean haven for life that lasted for 8 million years.

Evidence of this was found when researchers analyzed samples from Mexico's Chicxulub crater - the enormous impact basin left behind by the collision.

As it turns out, the extreme heat generated by the asteroid strike created a kind of "hydrothermal system" deep beneath the ground.According to the researchers, the melted rock combined with seawater to produce tiny habitats capable of supporting microbial life for millions of years.

"Wherever on Earth you find flowing warm water, you find life, and we've known for a while that asteroid impacts create hydrothermal systems," said Dr Annemarie Pickersgill of the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Center (SUERC).

"Previous research undertaken in the early 2000s suggested that the system created by the Chicxulub impact lasted for about two million years."

"Those findings were based on computer models which were, even at the time, regarded as conservative estimates, but we were still surprised by the outcomes of our research."

Source: Independent

Tags: Asteroid