--- title: The asteroid: the day the dinosaurs died and who survived — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «The asteroid: the day the dinosaurs died and who survived», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: About 66 million years ago an asteroid about 10 kilometres wide, as wide as a big city, hit what is now Mexico a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / The asteroid: the day the dinosaurs di… # The asteroid: the day the dinosaurs died and who survived Lesson 271 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 16 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/0/) — About 66 million years ago an asteroid about 10 kilometres wide, as wide as a big city, hit what is now Mexico at about 20 kilometres a second and left the Chicxulub crater, about 180 kilometres across. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/1/) — The blast threw hot rock into the sky that fell back and set off fires, made giant waves, and filled the air with dust and soot that darkened the sky for months or years. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/2/) — Without sunlight the plants could not make food, so they died, then the plant-eaters starved, then the meat-eaters: the food chain fell down from the bottom like a tower of blocks. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/3/) — Small animals that could burrow, hide in water, or eat seeds and dead things, such as frogs, turtles, crocodiles, small mammals and some birds, came through it. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/4/) — With the big dinosaurs gone, mammals spread and grew to every size, and our own ancestors were among them, so in a way we owe our lives to that rock from space. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/5/) — An asteroid about 10 kilometres wide hit Chicxulub in Mexico 66 million years ago at about 20 kilometres a second; the crater, about 180 kilometres wide, is now buried under land and sea. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/6/) — The blast was billions of times stronger than the biggest bomb ever made; it started fires, made giant waves and darkened the sky for months or years. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/7/) — All over the world a thin clay layer rich in iridium marks the end of the dinosaurs; iridium is rare on Earth but common in asteroids, a clue found by Luis and Walter Alvarez, father and son, in 1980. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/8/) — At Tanis in North Dakota, scientists report fish that died with tiny glass beads from the impact in their gills, which may record the very day; this find is still being studied. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/9/) — Without sunlight plants could not make food, so plant-eaters starved, and then meat-eaters: the food chain collapsed from the bottom. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/11/) — About three quarters of all kinds of life died out; frogs, turtles, crocodiles, small mammals and some birds survived. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/12/) — With the big dinosaurs gone, mammals spread and grew big, and within a few million years there were mammals of every size, our ancestors among them. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/13/) — Scientists track big asteroids, and none of the known large ones will hit Earth in the next hundred years. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/14/) — In 2022 the DART spacecraft bumped into an asteroid and changed its path, a test of how to protect Earth. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/15/) — Shooting stars are tiny bits of space dust, usually smaller than a grain of sand, burning up high in the air; many tonnes of dust fall on Earth every day. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/271-the-asteroid-the-day-the-dinosaurs-died/16/) — There have been five great mass extinctions; the end of the dinosaurs was the most recent, and the biggest, 252 million years ago, killed about nine in ten sea species. - ← previous: [Not dinosaurs at all: pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs and Mary Anning](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/270-not-dinosaurs-pterosaurs-plesiosaurs-mosasaurs-mary-anning/) - next →: [Mammoths and the Ice Age giants: sabre-tooths, ground sloths and woolly rhinos](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/272-mammoths-and-the-ice-age-giants/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)