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How life on Earth was boosted by an asteroid collision 446m years ago


Something mysterious happened nearly half a billion years ago that triggered one of the most important changes in the history of life on Earth. Suddenly, there was an explosion of species, with the biodiversity of invertebrate animals increasing from a very low level to something similar to what we see today. The most popular explanation for this “Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event” is that it was a result of an uncomfortably hot Earth cooling and eventually heading into an ice age. But what actually triggered the change in temperature? In our new paper, published in Science Advances, we show that its…

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