Fossils Recorded the First Hour After the Asteroid Hit

The asteroid that ended the Cretaceous hit in spring, 66 million years ago. This is what happened in the first hour — reconstructed almost minute by minute from a single riverbed in North Dakota — and why that hour changed the next fifteen years on this planet. 00:00 An ordinary morning 02:47 The impact 04:08 Six minutes later, three thousand kilometres away 05:30 Tanis: the fish that were breathing when it fell 06:23 The sky comes back down 08:10 The wave 09:46 The first night 10:04 Fifteen years without sunlight 12:31 What survived 13:11 The crater is still there SOURCES Tanis deposit, seismic arrival times, spherules in fish gills DePalma et al. 2019, PNAS — https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas... The impact happened in boreal spring During et al. 2022, Nature — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4158... Thermal radiation at the surface ("oven set to broil") Goldin & Melosh 2009, Geology — https://doi.org/10.1130/G30433A.1 Fine dust amplified that heat 3.5× — published July 2026 Johnson et al. 2026, JGR Biogeosciences — https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c... Ejecta reaccretion timing Kring & Durda 2002, JGR Planets — https://doi.org/10.1029/2001JE001532 Impact winter driven by fine silicate dust Senel et al. 2023, Nature Geoscience — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4156... Sulfur release revised down ~5× Nature Communications 2024 — https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146... The asteroid came from beyond Jupiter Fischer-Gödde et al. 2024, Science — https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s... No tree-dwelling bird lineage survived the extinction Field et al. 2018, Current Biology — https://www.cell.com/current-biology/... Every scene in this film is AI-generated — no camera recorded this world. The science is sourced (see above); the visual detail is interpretation, not scientific illustration. The script, research and narration choices are original.