Earth is in the midst of an "asteroid spike", says the study (Image: GETTY)
The findings of the research, published in the journal Science by academics Sara Mazrouei, Rebecca R Ghent, William F Bottke, Alex H Parker and Thomas M Gernon, suggests the rate of huge asteroid impacts on Earth has almost tripled over the course of the last 290 million years. The object which smashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, resulting in the extinction of the dinosaurs, a prime example. That impact was just one of an ongoing “spike” of huge asteroid impacts which have continued to bombard the region of the solar system which contains Earth ever since, they concluded.
Their downfall was somewhat inevitable given the surge of large space rocks colliding with Earth
Thomas M Gernon
The team studied one billion years of asteroid craters on both the Earth and the Moon.
Mr Gernon, who is associate professor of Earth science at the University of Southampton, said: “It's perhaps fair to say it was a date with destiny for the dinosaurs.
"Their downfall was somewhat inevitable given the surge of large space rocks colliding with Earth."
The Moon has faced a similar number of asteroid hits over the same period, the study concluded, but unlike on Earth, where a combination of geologic processes such as erosion and plate tectonics gradually erase impact craters, those
