Its detection at unearthly levels in rocks 65 million years old was the first evidence in the case for an asteroid causing the mass extinction and global environmental mayhem that ended the Cretaceous period and began the Tertiary period.

BBC: Leaving our mark: Fossils of the future

About 70 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, Lenny and a bunch of friends snuck out of the house to go tip over some Hadrosaurs that were grazing in a field in modern-day Mongolia.

FORBES: US Attorney Preet Bharara Disregards Statutes of Limitation in 70 Million Year Pursuit Of Stolen Tyrannosaurus

The moment most people were persuaded that the dinosaurs were killed by an impact was when the crater in Mexico was shown to have been created 65m years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period.

ECONOMIST: Some new ideas about why life on Earth has periodic crises

Besides bringing new species to the textbooks - and relegating them immediately to the "extinct" category - the study sheds new light on the extinction event, widely thought to have been caused by an enormous asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65.5 million years ago.

BBC: Obama-named lizard was wiped out with the dinosaurs

My piece is set in the late Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago (give or take a few).

FORBES: Prototyping The Distant Future

One confounding factor is that the late Cretaceous was also a period of great volcanic activity.

ECONOMIST: Mass extinctions