Roughly 66 million years ago, Earth was struck by a city-size asteroid. The impact released the energy equivalent to the detonation of 72 trillion tons (65 metric tons) of TNT, carving a 100-mile-wide (180 kilometers) scar in what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
The most infamous effect of this asteroid, named the Chicxulub impactor, was the death of the nonavian dinosaurs along with around three-quarters of Earth's species in an event called the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.
