Deep Impact — or the Day the Dinosaurs Died

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Deep Impact — or the Day the Dinosaurs Died

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1Taphophile13
Mrz. 30, 2019, 1:04 pm

Scientists have unearthed a remarkable trove of fossils that appear to date from the very day of the meteor impact that caused mass extinctions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/science/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid.html

2Bookmarque
Mrz. 30, 2019, 1:36 pm

Paywall

3Taphophile13
Mrz. 30, 2019, 2:02 pm

Odd. I can access it and I don't have a subscription.

4jjwilson61
Mrz. 30, 2019, 2:35 pm

I think NY Times gives you 2 or 3 free accesses a month.

5stellarexplorer
Mrz. 30, 2019, 6:20 pm

What a remarkable story! Remnants of the most important day in the last 66 million years preserved to be seen. From a human point of view, arguably one of the most important days ever, as it changed Earth’s biology forever, creating the path that made our existence possible. Thrilling!

This paragraph jumped out at me:

“The fossil deposit also teems with tektites, tiny glass beads that are the telltale fallout of planetary-scale impacts. Fifty percent of the fossilized fish were found with tektites in their gills, as if the fish had inhaled the material. Also recovered were tektites trapped in amber. Their chemical composition was unchanged in 66 million years, and it closely matched the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event.”

And also:

“The top layer of the fossil bed was found to be rich in iridium”

Wow. Just wow!

6clamairy
Apr. 7, 2019, 1:08 pm

Here's the much longer article in The New Yorker that the NY Times piece references:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

And the scientific paper on which it was based:
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116

7Macumbeira
Bearbeitet: Apr. 7, 2019, 2:24 pm

Thanks !
I was wondering if the two Dino- diggers dressed up for the occasion or really worked dressed like Indiana Jones. They wear very impractical boots for instance.

: )

8stellarexplorer
Apr. 8, 2019, 10:07 pm

Working on a video on this

9clamairy
Apr. 16, 2019, 7:08 pm

10stellarexplorer
Apr. 16, 2019, 10:35 pm

>9 clamairy: oh, forgot to post. Here’s my video on this fascinating report:

https://youtu.be/1znVY4-aNlQ

11clamairy
Bearbeitet: Apr. 16, 2019, 11:26 pm

>10 stellarexplorer: Thank you for that. Well done! Where'd you find those fossil photos? Reading the articles and then the paper sent my brain careening off in search more Chicxulub info. I ditched what I was reading and I'm almost halfway through T. Rex and the Crater of Doom by Walter Alvarez. (He's also one of the co-authors of the paper.) I'm hoping we'll be hearing a lot about this for years.

12stellarexplorer
Apr. 17, 2019, 1:03 am

>10 stellarexplorer: I had the same experience, Clammy! This story so grabbed my imagination, that I had to pursue it. The myriad ways nature, the universe, the earth, human beings, preserve and contain vital telling pieces of their history are among the most gripping and awesome phenomena to me. And this?! The moment of the K-Pg extinction preserved for all time?! Astonishing! I’m glad to have lived to see it.

So I got the Alvarez book too (it came today!) when I saw it recommended by Steve Brusette in the Notes section for the chapter “Dinosaurs Die Out” in his recent book The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs. Haven’t yet started it, but glad you are enjoying it. He described it as “a readable, entertaining, scrupulous first-person view” of how the riddle of the K-Pg extinction was solved.

As far as the fossil photos, yes, they were terrific. Robert DePalma and his group did us (and the video) a big favor by making their paper open access. This meant I had full rights to reuse their materials including photos, etc. Many of those fossil pictures I took from the supplemental section of the paper.

Anyway, I’m very glad you liked it!

13clamairy
Bearbeitet: Apr. 17, 2019, 10:26 am

>12 stellarexplorer: Ah, I read/skimmed the paper, but on a Kindle Fire, so now I'm afraid I must have missed some of the photos. I know I lamented the size of the charts. I'll revisit it on a larger screen.

Yes, we are so lucky in that not only does the planet preserve this info, but that there are people who dedicate their lives to studying and searching for it.

I don't remember hearing about Alvarez ( and his equally brilliant dad) by name until reading A Short History of Nearly Everything. I do remember hearing of the impact theory during the 80s, but the names never registered. Now I think I need to get my hands on this book by Alvarez as well: A Most Improbable Journey A BIG HISTORY OF OUR PLANET AND OURSELVES.

(Editing for touchstones.)

14stellarexplorer
Apr. 17, 2019, 11:40 am

>13 clamairy: Big History. That sounds like a text to found a Group like this on!

15clamairy
Okt. 27, 2019, 9:41 am

Instead of starting a new thread I thought I'd share this here. It's about the mammals that arrived after the KT Extinction.

Colorado Fossils Show How Mammals Raced to Fill Dinosaurs’ Void https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/24/science/fossils-mammals-dinosaurs-colorado.ht...

16stellarexplorer
Okt. 27, 2019, 2:01 pm

Yeah, it’s an amazing story. The speed with which mammals proliferated, grew larger, took over niches previously occupied by dinosaurs: all needing to be reworked in the light of these finds. I’d previously heard times like 2 million years or so after the impact for this kind of recovery. Wrong!