Study suggests​ asteroid might have done more than wiping out dinosaurs

A new study says the giant space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs may have set off a chain of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions undersea.

About 66 million years ago a 6-mile wide asteroid smacked into Earth, creating the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan and sparking deadly chaos. First it set fires across the globe and then it triggered years of cold darkness.

But a new study in Wednesday's journal Science Advances says it may have also triggered extra strong eruptions on the floor of the oceans. Study authors calculate that those eruptions ejected so much molten rock underwater that on land it would cover the entire continental United States a couple hundred feet deep or so.