So, is this the way it occured? A massive meteorite, coming to Earth off the Yucatan penisula, with lots of pyrotechnics followed by a slow, agonising death in a fallout winter? For the last thirty years or so this theory has enjoyed a great deal of coverage both in scientific circles and amongst the general public. But nothing is ever certain in science and there are a number of scientists who were never really convinced by the meteorite theory. Even those who support the theory have had to supplement the meteor with the massive volcanic upheaval going on in this period around the Deccan traps. The Extinction of the Dinosaurs wasn't the first mass extinction, indeed there was the even greater mass extinction at the end of the Permian period that took out 90% of all life on Earth, whereas the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction event accounted for a mere 65% of all species. For this image I applied a Map of the Earth 65 million years ago to an Earth Prop (RS Earth) The map came from this website: http://forum.celestialmatters.org/viewtopic.php?t=205 However it seems it originally came from the Global Paleogeography Website available here-an.ucc.nau.edu/~rcb7/globaltext2.html