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

The question is one of the most hotly contested in palaeontology and revolves around an apparent gap in the fossil record immediately prior to the K-T boundary - the distinct layer of geological sediments separating the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods, and associated with a massive asteroid impact and global extinction event.

BBC: Closing the 'three metre gap'

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