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Thursday, 22 February, 2001, 19:18 GMT Asteroid 'destroyed life 250m years ago'

Crater left by impact 500 centuries ago in Arizona By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

Atoms from a star trapped inside molecular cages of carbon prove that Earth's biggest mass extinction - an event 251 million years ago - was triggered by a collision with a comet or asteroid.

This conclusion was reached by researchers in the United States, reporting in the journal Science.

Scientists do not know the site of the impact, at a time when all Earth's land formed a supercontinent called Pangea. But they have identified traces of the object that crashed to Earth.

In rock layers laid down at the time there is a much higher concentration of complex carbon molecules called fullerenes that contain isotopes of helium and argon trapped inside them.

Chemical clues

The fullerenes contain at least 60 carbon atoms in a structure resembling a soccer ball.

The researchers believe these particular fullerenes are extraterrestrial because the gases trapped inside have an unusual ratio of isotopes that indicate they were made in the atmosphere of a star that exploded before our Sun was born.

"These things form in carbon stars. That's what's exciting about finding fullerenes as a tracer," said Dr Luann Becker of the University of Washington.

The telltale fullerenes were extracted from sites in Japan, China and Hungary, where the sedimentary layer at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods had been exposed.

Dr Becker said that the fullerenes were found at very low concentrations above and below the boundary layer, but they were found in unusually high concentrations at the time of the extinction.

The research was made difficult because there are few 251 million-year-old rocks left on Earth. Most rocks of that age have been recycled through the planet's tectonic processes.

"It took us two years to do this research, to try to narrow it down enough so that we could see this fullerene signature," she said.

Heavenly delivery

The fullerene concentration at the Permian-Triassic boundary means they were delivered to the Earth by a comet or asteroid.

Researchers estimate the comet or asteroid was 6 to 12 km (3.7 - 7.4 miles) across, or about the size of the asteroid believed responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 67 million years ago.

The scientists determined the size based on two factors - if the body was smaller than 6 km (3.7 miles) the effects would not have been global; if it were larger than 12 km (7.4 miles) there would have to be more gas-laden fullerenes distributed around the world.

"The impact of a body of this size releases an amount of energy that is basically about one million times the largest earthquake recorded during the last century," said Robert Poreda, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Rochester, New York.

Researchers believe that the impact and rapid extinction occurred simultaneously with some of the most extensive volcanic activity the world has ever seen: enough lava to cover the entire planet with 3 metres (10ft) of it, oozed out of the ground in Siberia in less than one million years.

These changes wiped out 90% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrates.

"If the species cannot adjust, they perish. It's a survival-of-the-fittest sort of thing," said Dr Becker.

"To knock out 90% of organisms, you've got to attack them on more than one front."

The mass extinction of 251 million years ago was the greatest on record.

Many fossils below the boundary, such as trilobites, which once numbered more than 15,000 species, are completely absent above it.

There is also strong evidence suggesting the extinction happened very rapidly, in as few as 8,000 to 100,000 years.

It was thought that any asteroid or comet collision would leave strong evidence of the element iridium, the signal found in the sedimentary layer from the time of the dinosaur extinction. The team believes that difference might be because the two space bodies that slammed into Earth had different compositions.

"These two extinctions are like bookends for the age of the dinosaurs," said Dr Poreda.

In 1996, Becker and Poreda discovered that fullerenes found in a huge impact crater in Canada came from space nearly two billion years ago.

Last year they showed that even more complex carbon molecules, with as many as 200 atoms, had survived from the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.

-- Anonymous, February 22, 2001