The Day the Dinosaurs Died Page #3

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One of our more common fossils is wood.

In the Gulf of Mexico, the

crew are on the verge

of breaking into the

asteroid impact crater,

but, at the worst possible

moment, they've hit a roadblock.

So they just woke me up because there's

a problem with the drilling.

We don't know if it's snapped or

if it just got stuck a little bit.

We don't know, but they

have to bring it back

to the surface to take a look.

As they get nearer the crater,

the rock is getting tougher to penetrate,

and that's causing problems with the drill.

TOOL BUZZES:

Getting to the point where

you start pushing the drill

beyond its capacity, and

right now, there's no...

There's no drilling rods, no

bit, no anything in the hole.

While the engineers fix the rig,

the scientists lose valuable drilling time.

Behind me, you'll notice

the rig is not moving.

SPARKS CRACKLE:

The pump that allows it to

turn is actually broken.

RUMBLING:

We're in a bit of a race against time now.

We're going to struggle

to get to 1,500 metres.

So we're all hopeful -

fingers, toes and so on are crossed -

and we'll see how this goes.

Finally, after a month of drilling,

the team are pulling rock from

the asteroid crater itself.

Already, they're seeing

evidence of the incredible heat

generated by the impact -

rock that has melted.

And look at...

In this part, it is very clear that

we have different kinds of colours,

like this red color.

It goes from green to red...

- I think it's melting the material.

- Melted... - Yeah.

- What about this?

- I think that is a big cluster melt.

That does, too. Look at that.

That looks like the suevite.

And we are now fully into

impact rocks directly,

and it's really easy to

see, because it's granite,

and so you can see these spotted,

leopard-looking big chunks.

So, in effect, you know,

these were formed, you know, on

the days that the dinos died.

Quite heavy, these, aren't they?

Yeah, you really appreciate just...

just how solid this rock is.

How deep have you gone with this so far?

We've got to just 1,330 metres, about that.

So, we were hoping to get 1,500 metres,

but we've got 700 metres

of peak ring materials,

so we're pretty happy.

Why couldn't you get 1,500?

SHE LAUGHS:

Cos... cos the budget ran out.

Oh, no!

I'm dying to ask the question

that I wanted to know as a kid -

where's the asteroid?

- Yes, a lot of people think I'm going

to find the asteroid... - Yeah.

And ask me that question a lot.

Something like 95 or more percent

of the asteroid is vaporized.

- Mm-hm. - So, in fact, there's

hardly any asteroid here

beneath the surface.

The asteroid material has been, sort of,

spread all around the globe,

so it's been ejected way above

the Earth's atmosphere,

traveled round the globe,

and landed around the Earth.

After eight weeks, the work here is done.

I don't think it could

have gone much better.

I'll not forget this place.

It's been an amazing expedition,

and I expect we'll have lots more

discoveries to come.

More than 300 rock cores

have been extracted,

which the team hopes will tell the

story of how the dinosaurs died.

Four months and over 5,000 miles later,

the rock cores are now here

at the University of Bremen in Germany,

for the second phase

of this colossal and

unparalleled scientific journey.

I'm inside a huge fridge that's

now home to all the samples that

were taken up from the Gulf of Mexico,

and it's really cold in

here, as you might expect.

Now, this is to stop any

organisms from growing

and contaminating these samples.

This is a test recording. Say something.

Oh. Hello, hello.

Here in Bremen, the research team is

working to find out what happened,

minute by minute, after

the asteroid struck,

and what that meant for the dinosaurs.

OK, this is day two that

we've had the samples,

and I'm going to take you through the...

around the labs

where everybody's started their analysis.

Over here we can see people

looking through microscopes,

looking at thin slides that have

been collected from offshore.

Hi, Philippe. I'm going to film you

while you take a look at this core.

Hey!

Unraveling these cores is a mammoth task.

Over 800 metres of rock has

to be carefully split,

tested and photographed.

But what they're starting to reveal

about the force of the impact

is literally earth-shattering.

This core, from above the crater, is

what typical geology looks like -

layer upon layer of similar-looking rock,

laid down on the seabed very slowly.

This three metres of limestone took

millions of years to accumulate.

But when the asteroid struck...

it was geology at hyper-speed.

The next 600 metres of rock

were deposited in a single day,

leaving a unique and chaotic jumble.

Sean, I mean, how do you make

sense of this incredible place

- that you've got here?

- It is amazing.

This is 150km worth of core,

collected by the International

Ocean Discovery Program

- and all its predecessors back

to the late '60s. - Mm-hm.

But from all these cores,

- the most amazing is the one

we just collected... - Yeah.

- In the Chicxulub impact crater.

- Of course, yeah.

You can see this black,

flowing texture of the rock.

This is actually...

- It looks like it flowed, right?

- Mm. - You can see the textures in it.

This is actually melted basement rock,

melted granite, and it actually

takes amazing pressures to do that,

and amazing pressures to melt the rock.

This is...

So I've got a piece of what

would be considered, sort of,

normal granite, if you will -

the kind that you might

put on your counter-top,

and that's why we use it,

cos it's nice and hard.

- I mean, it... Right?

- Pretty solid.

But this... Yeah, exactly.

This stuff has actually seen

shock of an incredible level,

so think of it as pressure waves

moving down through the granite,

like lots and lots of little earthquakes.

And what it's done to it is,

all the way down at the scale of a crystal,

- is it's actually deformed it...

- Mm-hmm.

So that the final granite...

can be broken.

- It just crumbled up. That's...

that's amazing. - Yeah.

Oh, wow. Just such incredible,

amazing forces at work here.

This whole event, it's... I'm

still finding it difficult.

Well, even as a geophysicist,

where we study this for a living,

it's really hard to wrap our

brains around the enormity of

the pressures involved, and the

enormity of the destruction

- that happens in the middle of an

impact, and so quickly. - Mm-hm.

This all happened in less than ten minutes.

It's becoming clear just

how mind-bogglingly huge

the Yucatan impact really was.

And to help grasp its scale,

Sean is taking a trip to a more

recent impact site in Arizona.

This simple crater here was created

by about a 50-meter, or 150-foot,

asteroid impacting the Earth,

about 50,000 years ago.

It's about a mile across.

It's actually quite small.

It's basically, simply,

a bowl-shaped crater.

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