Question

What is the chain of events that may have occurred if a meteorite collided with Earth, causing the extinction of many plants and animals?

Answer 1

The last really big extinction event was at the end of the Cretaceous period, 65.6 million years ago. A giant asteroid, about 10 km in size, hit the Earth and killed off the dinosaurs.

Explanation:

From this event, we know quite a bit about what would happen, as follows:

• if on land, an enormous shock wave much like multiple hydrogen bombs going off. If in the water, enormous tsunamis would hit around the world.
• enormous clouds of debris thrown in the air some falling back to Earth as bombs. Soot in the atmosphere would set off a temporary global cooling event that would kill off most photosynthetic plants for up to a decade. Species like herbivores who ate plants would be in trouble.
• forests would catch on fire around the world and add huge amounts of CO2 to the air - perhaps setting off a global warming event after the cooling.
• impact of a large asteroid could also set off a period of volcanic activity, which seems to have happened in the past. More CO2 in the atmosphere, could make a global warming event worse.
• the protective ozone layer could be damaged which would lead to high UV radiation exposure to animals and us on land
• global acid rain might start to fall and oceans could be acidified.
• all of the above would set off a mass species extinction event

After a few hundred or thousands of years, the Earth system would start to re-equilbraite and go back to normal again. However, m any species would die but some survivors would become the dominate new species. ,