Scientists went on record Wednesday to clear the name of the prime suspect behind the dinosaurs' mass extinction.

New evidence from NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, clears the name of the Baptistina family of asteroids that many thought was responsible for crashing into Earth and triggering the mass extinction.

"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program.

The prevalent theory was that a member of the Baptistina family in the asteroid belt crashed into another asteroid that sent giant chunks flying into Earth. But according to new data, this collision happened too late for it have caused the dinosaurs' demise. The original Baptistina asteroid, scientists estimate, broke apart 80 million years ago which was too late to arrive here on Earth to kill off the dinosaurs.

"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a study co-author and the principal investigator of NEOWISE. "This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years."

The WISE science team analyzed more than 157,000 asteroids, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family. Using the telescope's infrared properties, the team was able to determine the age of the asteroids that were suspected in the dinosaur extinction. The results let the family off the hook.

For now the killer is still at large. Scientists are reconstructing the crime scene and are now looking for an asteroid about 6.2 miles in diameter that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico.

"We are working on creating an asteroid family tree of sorts," Joseph Masiero, lead author of a study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal, said in a statement. "We are starting to refine our picture of how the asteroids in the main belt smashed together and mixed up."