Chicxulub impact

Imagine the worst day in Earth's history: 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, wiping out the dinosaurs and about 75% of all species on Earth. The oceans were especially hard hit. Tiny shelled creatures called foraminifera — think microscopic snails that float in the ocean — were nearly completely wiped out. Scientists used to think it took around 30,000 years before new species of these creatures started showing up. But this new study used a clever trick: measuring a rare type of helium (helium-3) that rains down from space at a steady rate, like a cosmic clock, to figure out exactly how fast sediment was piling up on the ocean floor. By doing that, they could measure time far more precisely. What they found was shocking — brand new species were appearing in the fossil record less than 2,000 years after the asteroid hit. That's incredibly fast for evolution. In fact, up to 10 brand new species appeared within a window of just 3,500 to 11,000 years across six different ocean locations around the world.