This Article First Appeared In The Conversation On Nov 24, 2022
Sixty-six million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth with the force of 10 billion atomic bombs and changed the course of evolution. The skies darkened and plants stopped photosynthesising. The plants died, then the animals that fed on them. The food chain collapsed. Over 90% of all species vanished. When the dust settled, all dinosaurs except a handful of birds had gone extinct.
But this catastrophic event made human evolution possible. The surviving mammals flourished, including little proto-primates that would evolve into us.