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SCIENTISTS have come up with evidence of how at least 70% of the dinosaur population was wiped out in a study at Yale University, in which palaeontologist Dr Laia Alegret (pictured), took part.

The researcher from the Aragón Institute of Environmental Science, part of Zaragoza University, was one of the team which has concluded that the dinosaurs were largely wiped out by an asteroid.

In a debate spanning generations, researchers have never been able to agree on whether these giant reptiles became extinct because of a volcanic eruption and the global warming that came with it, or whether they were struck by an asteroid hitting the earth.

But the Yale team believes both factors came into play – although the asteroid was the main cause of extinction.

According to the article published in Science magazine, the volcanic eruptions which led to planetary warming started before, and finished after, the asteroid incident.

It is known that, around 66 million years ago between the end of the Cretacean era and the start of the Tertiary period, an asteroid of 10 kilometres (6.25 miles) in diameter crash-landed on the Yucatán peninsula in eastern México, giving off a massive amount of gases and molten mass into the atmosphere, which caused acid rain and huge quantities of acid in the surface of the oceans – a natural disaster of which the effects went on at least for days, but possibly even for years.