298 Baptistina is a common Main belt asteroid. It was found by Auguste Charlois on September 9, 1890 in Nice.
Although it has an orbit similar to the Flora family asteroids, it was found to be an unrelated asteroid.[1]
A 2007 US-Czech study decided that 298 Baptistina may be the biggest remnant of a 170 km (110 mile) asteroid that was destroyed about 160 million years ago in an impact with a smaller body, making the Baptistina family of asteroids and that the Baptistina event may have created the eventual impact asteroid believed by many to have caused the Cretaceous – Tertiary extinction event about 65 million years ago.[2]. This is the K/T impactor believed to be shown in the geological record.[3] This theory has not, as yet, found general acceptance among the scientific community.
[change] References
- ↑ M. Florczak et al. A Visible Spectroscopic Survey of the Flora Clan, Icarus Vol. 133, p. 233 (1998)
- ↑ Bottke WF, Vokrouhlický D Nesvorný D. (2007) An asteroid breakup 160 Myr ago as the probable source of the K/T impactor. Nature 449, 48-53
- ↑ "Space pile-up 'condemned dinos'". Sept. 5, 2007.
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Small Solar System bodies
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