10 Dollars Dinosaur Extinction

Palau has operated a prolific commemorative program since the 1990s, licensing its sovereign minting rights to European producers — primarily the Bavarian State Mint and various Austrian houses — to generate foreign currency revenue. The actual scientific hook here is sound: the Chicxulub impactor struck roughly 66 million years ago off the Yucatán Peninsula, releasing energy estimated at over a billion times the Hiroshima bomb and triggering the end-Cretaceous mass extinction that eliminated roughly three-quarters of Earth's species.

KM#984 is part of a longer Palauan series exploiting paleontology themes for the collector market. Mintages on these issues are typically capped low by contract, though exact figures are rarely disclosed by the licensing intermediaries.