LOOKING FOR FLORIDA

In one blinding flash, the world changed!

Last Days

It's 70 million years ago. The orange circle is the target. In five million years an asteroid will explode the last days of the dinosaurs. The center of the crater rests below a little town in the Yucatan peninsula named Chicxulub. This Map is bassed on J.L Pindellm 1994. Any errors are my own.

It's early June, 65 million years ago. The asteroid entered the atmosphere from the southeast, low on the horizon. It crashed on the northern edge of the Yucatan peninsula.

Central Florida is 600 miles away. Although the flash instantly lit up the southern sky, the explosive force took ten seconds to reach us. Below the ocean waves, the cliffs surrounding the Florida plateau trembled and collapsed into the dark abyss in a cloud of silt. Burning glass beads rained from the sky and a huge tidal wave swept northward. The fireball roared north and south killing everything in its path. The days of the dinosaurs came to an end.

It is 60 million years ago. The world is still recovering from the asteroid's impact. Apparently a few pockets of ferns survived. They spread across the landscape. Narrow-leafed trees came next. These trees were northern varieties which lost their leaves each year. Even though they spread south, they continued to lose their leaves.

Turtles were very successful in this new landscape. Crocodiles and alligators must have survived the blast in some hidden pockets. Their fossils begin to show up in the early layers after the Chicxulub explosion.

In the center, the island of Cuba is forming. As the arc of land connecting North America with South America moves east, it will break up to form Jamaica, Haiti, Puerto Rico, and the Lesser Antilles. The arc of land to the left will become modern Central America.

The world smoldered.

Acid rain fell.

What was left of life trembled in the cold beneath a blanket of clouds.

The wounded died.