Drilling into Extinction

Published: 13th Mar 2016

Scientists are planning to drill into the Chicxulub crater formed by the impact of the asteroid that helped to wipe out the dinosaurs. The crater is partly situated on the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico with the remainder under the sea. The aim of the mission is to discover how life was regenerated after the mass extinction that killed all non-avian dinosaurs. It is hoped that microbial life will be discovered in the rock cores.

Drilling is scheduled to start at the beginning of April from a vessel platform some 30 kilometres off the Yucatan coast. The team will take core sample and look for micro-fossils and DNA samples in the rocks. Hopefully we will learn the secrets of how life re-established itself after the mass extinction. This ultimately led to the evolution of our earliest ancestors on the planet.