Meteor Seen as Causing Extinctions on Earth

An anonymous reader writes "From the NY Times (I think you may have to register): About three dozen minuscule shards of rock unearthed in Antarctica may be the fragments of a meteor that killed most life on Earth 250 million years ago, scientists are reporting today. These rocks have yielded soccer-ball-shaped molecules known as buckyballs containing extraterrestrial gases, as well as grains of quartz with fractures that indicate a tremendous shock. The extinction 250 million years ago, in a period known as the Permian-Triassic boundary, was the largest of all. About 90 percent of species disappeared."