KATSUYAMA, FUKUI PREF. ¨C A team of Japanese researchers has discovered traces of an asteroid collision in Hokkaido that may have caused the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period some 66 million years ago.
The discovery of a layer in the eastern part of Hokkaido is the first-ever confirmation of such traces in Japan, according to the recent announcement from the team, led by researchers from Tohoku University, the University of Tokyo and Fukui Prefectural University.
The asteroid, which was 10 to 15 kilometers in diameter, hit an area near the present-day Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, and is considered to have been one of the causes of the extinction of dinosaurs by triggering rapid global cooling.
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