Dust cloud sparked explosion in primitive life on Earth, say scientists | Science | The Guardian
▻https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/sep/18/dust-cloud-sparked-explosion-in-primitive-life-on-earth-say-scientists
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An enormous dust cloud that swept through the ancient solar system sent Earth into a mini ice age that sparked an explosion in primitive life on the planet, scientists say.
The space dust was created when a monster asteroid was smashed to pieces in a violent collision somewhere between Mars and Jupiter nearly half a billion years ago.
The destruction of the 93-mile-wide space rock scattered so much dust into the inner solar system that it blocked some of the sunlight falling on Earth, the researchers claim. As a result, temperatures dropped for at least 2m years.
(…) “Ice ages have been associated with major volcanic eruptions, but for the first time the team has implicated asteroid-derived dust in the initiation of global cooling and a major leap in biodiversity that changed marine ecosystems forever,” he added.
