How scientists unearthed the cosmic catastrophe that paved the way for humanity

How scientists unearthed the cosmic catastrophe that paved the way for humanity

It’s not something you think about every day, but we owe our existence to a catastrophic cosmic impact. Some 66 million years ago — 10 times farther back in time than the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees — an unimaginable natural disaster put a permanent end to the dinosaurs. This suddenly opened new, rapid evolutionary possibilities for mammals, ultimately including primates. The rest is history, as the saying goes: If the dinosaurs ha…