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Scientists say they can now describe in detail how the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs produced its huge crater. The reconstruction of the event 66 million years ago was made possible by drilling into the remnant bowl and analysing its rocks. These show how the space impactor made the hard surface of the planet slosh back and forth like a fluid. At one stage, a mountain higher than Everest was thrown up before collapsing back into a smaller range of peaks. "And this all happens on the scale of minutes, which is quite amazing," Prof Joanna Morgan from Imperial...

Mexico announced Friday it has suspended permits for a U.S. research vessel conducting sound-wave experiments in the Gulf after the ship ran aground on a coral reef and damaged it. Mexico's Environment Department said the U.S. ship Maurice Ewing must stop the research voyage until it pays for damage done to underwater rock formations and coral about 30 miles off the Yucatan peninsula in the Monday accident. "This is a precautionary measures to ensure the ship pays the damages and fines," said Attorney General for Environmental Protection Jose Luis Luege. Officials with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, which is in...

Scientists probing a vast crater off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula questioned a popular theory about dinosaurs on Monday, saying the collision that formed the crater happened too far back in time to have caused their extinction by itself. Much evidence points to the idea that an asteroid or comet gouged the Earth around 65 million years ago, triggering volcanic and climate changes that eventually wiped out the dinosaurs. When the huge, mostly underwater crater was found off Yucatan, it seemed the perfect candidate. "Since the early 1990s the Chicxulub crater on Yucatan, Mexico, has been hailed as the smoking gun that...