What Happened To The Dinosaurs?

Published April 7, 2016 at 12:45 PM CDT

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A triceratops fossil at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. A research expedition in a Mexican crater will try to yield new information about how the dinosaurs became extinct. (Daniel Mennerich/Flickr)

The extinction of the dinosaurs remains one of the world’s enduring mysteries, but a project getting underway off the coast of Mexico may provide some answers.

A team of researchers from the US and the UK will be drilling into the Chicxulub Crater, which was created when an asteroid hit the earth more than 60 million years ago.

One they get access to the rock beneath the surface, the research team could learn more about the scale of the impact and the environmental catastrophe caused by the asteroid.

Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson speaks with the co-leader of the project, Joanna Morgan, an engineering professor at the Imperial College London.

Guest

Joanna Morgan, Professor in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College London. You can follow the project’s progress @ESO_Outreach.