A shaded relief image of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. NASA/JPL-Caltech. The single messiest day in geologically recorded history was the day the dinosaurs died. On that day, and across the days that would follow, tidal waves wrapped multiple times around our world as first a primary impactor hit our world, and then as the rocks it threw into the air rained back down in an atmosphere baking rain of destruction. One of the main reasons we know about that one really messy day is a strange layer of iridium and other elements that separates the layers of rocks containing a diversity of dinosaurs,...