Space rock, 'faster than a speeding bullet', killed off dinos

London, March 4 : A new study has suggested that a giant asteroid 'faster than a speeding bullet' wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

According to a report in the Express, the space rock "about the size of the Isle of Wight" slammed into Earth, exterminating more than half of all species.

Research published last year claimed the extinction was caused by huge volcanic eruptions in India that poisoned the atmosphere with sulphur dioxide - not the asteroid.

But, an analysis by international experts of all the evidence from the last 20 years showed these would have caused only minor damage to ecosystems and the effect of the gases would have been short-lived.

The asteroid - which left a crater at Chicxulub, Mexico, 9.3 miles wide - is believed to have hit Earth with a force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.

"The asteroid was about the size of the Isle of Wight and hit Earth 20 times faster than a speeding bullet," said Dr Gareth Collins of Imperial College London.