Face to foot with day zero of the dinos

There will be a day when someone in the future discovers the first signs of the first wave of a deadly pandemic that ultimately wiped out humanity. This extinction could very well take years, even decades, and much after humans settle down with relief thinking that the danger of ending up with the dodo and the dino has passed. The same thing may have transpired 66 million years ago when a 12 km-wide asteroid slammed into a spot off the Yucatan peninsula in central America extinguishing many species, most infamously, the dinosaurs. Now, a fossil has reportedly been discovered of a Thescelosaurus neglectus, a 'small' 100-300 kg upright running dinosaur, in the palaeontological site known as Tanis in North Dakota, some 3,000 km away from the Chicxulub impact crater in the Yucatan. What makes this dino fossil different from any other is that the severed limb - with skin intact - is thought to be from the very Day of the Asteroid. Day Zero.

Unlike the picture we have in our heads of species turning into cinders the moment the asteroid thumped into Earth, the effects of the impact event were drawn out over centuries. So, when one day someone finds a remarkably preserved fossil of a Wuhan resident, it would be wise for him/her/it to know that humankind didn't get wiped out in a day or a week or a few years, but took some time from Day Zero.