The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have created a vast underground habitat for life that lasted 8 million years

An illustration of an asteroid slamming into a body of water. There is an animal underwater. There are some flying animals in the sky.

The asteroid impact that doomed the dinosaurs may also have built one of Earth's longest-lasting underground ecosystems.

When a roughly 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, it triggered a global catastrophe that wiped out about 75% of life on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs.