The only place in Brazil where scientists were able to pinpoint evidence of the catastrophe that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is now open for visitation of students and researchers.
Officially called Geossítio K-Pg Mina Poty, the site is located in Paulista, Pernambuco, near the city of Olinda. The area was part of a mine explored by cement company Votorantim when the geological markers of a meteorite crash where identified there in the early 1990s by geologist Gilberto Albertão, at the time a grad student at Ouro Preto Federal University.
Although the company still keeps its mining activities in the vicinity, it decided, in a partnership with the Federal University of Pernambuco, to turn the old mine's 14 acres into a protected geological site.
The most accepted hypothesis to explain the end of the dinosaurs and other species at the late Cretaceous period is the impact of 10-mile wide meteorite in the Yucatán peninsula, in Mexico.
With energy equivalent to 10 billion Hiroshima atomic bombs, the crash caused tsunamis, fires, and an almost unimaginable atmospheric mess. But the relative proximity of the Pernambuco coast with the direct impact zone contributed for evidence of the catastrophe to become preserved in the ground. In other places around Brazil, the conditions were not so favorable to preserving geological evidence from the crash.
The company plans to stage a permanent exhibition to explain the discovery's importance, and it will set up a page on its website to host general information and post scientific studies.
Translated by NATASHA MADOV