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Description
The coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.
End Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago.
0 seconds to Impact.

Crashing through the atmosphere 50 times faster than a bullet from a revolver, the asteroid bears down on the shallow waters of the coast of Mexico. It’s so massive that as the leading end touches the surface of the sea, the trailing end is still 35,000 feet in air, the cruising altitude of a 747 jet airliner.

At the moment of impact, a mosasaur feasting on a still living giant ammonite breaches the surface. The great marine reptile is overcome by the light of the fireball as it touches down. It’s senses are overwhelmed and it’s mind becomes overcome with panic, causing it to drop it’s prey. The mosasaur barely has any time to process the excess stimuli or even turn back and swim away. Within less than a second, everything directly beneath the asteroid’s fall is vaporized. The ocean water is flashed to steam in an instant, and every creature under the incoming mass is destroyed.

Only a fraction of a second after touching the surface, the asteroid strikes the sea bottom. The impact unleashes a force of 100 million megatons worth of energy, 10,000 times greater than all of the nuclear weapons on Earth today. It’s substance destroyed in the blink of an eye, the mosasaur dies instantly. So does the ammonite it had caught. So does every living thing with range of the initial explosion.

In this one moment, the world is changed forever. And one of the single worst catastrophes in the history of life on this planet has begun...
————————-

And here it is. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The shit as officially hit the fan and it’s only gonna get a lot more intense before it all ends. Welcome to the apocalypse, bitches!

Anyways, with this entry, I really did my best to try and capture the intensity and violence unleashed at the moment of impact. In order to nail the look of this scene, I studied footage of nuclear weapons tests to create the flash of the asteroid as it strikes. I also took some inspiration from the work of other paleoartists, particularly Douglas Henderson. In fact, this piece is kind of meant as a homage to one of the pieces Doug made for his children’s book Asteroid Impact. Namely, the scene of a Tylosaurus leaping out of the water just before the asteroid hits. I loved that particular part of the book as a kid, so I figured I’d pay tribute to Doug’s work with this piece, as well as a few others in this series.

Description
The coast of the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.
End Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago.
0 seconds to Impact.

Crashing through the atmosphere 50 times faster than a bullet from a revolver, the asteroid bears down on the shallow waters of the coast of Mexico. It’s so massive that as the leading end touches the surface of the sea, the trailing end is still 35,000 feet in air, the cruising altitude of a 747 jet airliner.

At the moment of impact, a mosasaur feasting on a still living giant ammonite breaches the surface. The great marine reptile is overcome by the light of the fireball as it touches down. It’s senses are overwhelmed and it’s mind becomes overcome with panic, causing it to drop it’s prey. The mosasaur barely has any time to process the excess stimuli or even turn back and swim away. Within less than a second, everything directly beneath the asteroid’s fall is vaporized. The ocean water is flashed to steam in an instant, and every creature under the incoming mass is destroyed.

Only a fraction of a second after touching the surface, the asteroid strikes the sea bottom. The impact unleashes a force of 100 million megatons worth of energy, 10,000 times greater than all of the nuclear weapons on Earth today. It’s substance destroyed in the blink of an eye, the mosasaur dies instantly. So does the ammonite it had caught. So does every living thing with range of the initial explosion.

In this one moment, the world is changed forever. And one of the single worst catastrophes in the history of life on this planet has begun...
————————-

And here it is. The moment you’ve all been waiting for. The shit as officially hit the fan and it’s only gonna get a lot more intense before it all ends. Welcome to the apocalypse, bitches!

Anyways, with this entry, I really did my best to try and capture the intensity and violence unleashed at the moment of impact. In order to nail the look of this scene, I studied footage of nuclear weapons tests to create the flash of the asteroid as it strikes. I also took some inspiration from the work of other paleoartists, particularly Douglas Henderson. In fact, this piece is kind of meant as a homage to one of the pieces Doug made for his children’s book Asteroid Impact. Namely, the scene of a Tylosaurus leaping out of the water just before the asteroid hits. I loved that particular part of the book as a kid, so I figured I’d pay tribute to Doug’s work with this piece, as well as a few others in this series.