Dutch geologists attached to Utrecht and Amsterdam universities have uncovered hard evidence which they say is the first to show that the earth cooled down abruptly following an asteroid impact.

The ‘impact winter’ which followed the asteroid crash was caused by the injection of large amounts of dust into the atmosphere, which reduced solar radiation and eventually lead to the death of the dinosaurs and most plant life.

The asteroid in question is said to have hit the earth at Chicxulub in Mexico 66 million years ago. The researchers have been able to demonstrate ‘a major decline in the sea surface temperature’ by looking at fossilised sediments from the Brazos River region in Texas which was once the sea bed.

‘We interpret this cold spell to reflect, to our knowledge, the first direct evidence… of an impact winter,’ the scientists say on the website of American scientific journal PNAS.

This winter was ‘likely a major driver of mass extinction because of the resulting global decimation of marine and continental photosynthesis.’ Without photosynthesis, the food chain would have collapsed, leading to the the disappearance of plant and animal life.