[freebilly]

Scientists have speculated for more than a decade that the entire surface of the Earth below would have been baked by the equivalent of a global oven set on broil.

Sure, and the animals that burrowed underground or sheltered in water survived how? By eating what?

[harbinger of doom]

It's all true...it's science. I read it in a book.

(I, too, observed this same thing 65 million yrs ago)

[the_Watchman]

It looks like VELIKOVSKY's "Worlds In Collision" is being revisited!

[Aracelis]

The "heat pulse" caused by re-entering ejected matter would have reached around the globe, igniting fires and burning up all terrestrial organisms not sheltered in burrows or in water, he said.

Hmmmmm...I wanna see their model for this.

RA, you'd have a better grasp of the physics behind this...what do you think? Locally, yes, I can accept this hypothesis, but globally? Musta been one h*lluva bolide, and I'm not convinced that smaller biota would have survived even in well-protected niches...availability of free atmospheric oxygen being a major factor.

Permian, maybe...K/T? Call me very skeptical.

[Positive]

Wow this is a scary theory.

Earth may be a small target, but it has been traveling in a repetitive pattern for billions of years; in the field of trajectory of billions of astronomical projectiles...what are the odds of a hit?

[lelio]

striking with the energy of 100 million megatons of TNT

Where on earth did he get this figure from? The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were in the 12-20 KILO ton range, meaning this explosion is 5 MILLION times stronger (provided that a megaton = 1000 kilotons).

[kb2614]

Bush did it. Dan Rather said so.

;)

[Caipirabob]

Wow. One would almost expect the same reaction when liberals get hit with common sense. They're too akin to cockoraches I guess...

At any rate, if all the dinosaurs died then, how do they explain Helen Thomas?

Seriously, interesting article.

[djf]

They know what happened 65 milion years ago?

I can't even find my keys...

[mewzilla]

I thought the Cretaceous extinction took about a million years?

[angkor]

[searchandrecovery]

It's a popular theory on the internet that the huge crater at Chicxulub in the Yucatan, was caused by a spaceship carrying the original neanderthal seedlings. Man was supposed to evolve in a terribly harsh, dinosaur-filled environment - survival of the very fittest. Unfortunately, the crash moved human inception back a few million years.

One unforseen effect of this, because of the easier path, has been the early emergence of the "liberal" gene, which ideally would have been suppressed for a long, long time. Also, one can note that humans were to have started in north america rather that africa. Also, this event gave a big boost to cockroaches and rats, both of which were originally planned to exist in much smaller populations.

[Our man in washington]

I understand that scientists wanted to re-create the original event to verify the events. But they decided not to when they realized that re-creation would involve Michael Moore, a bag of beans, and a whole host of ethical issues.

[ZULU]

Well, it was 1 hour, forty minutes and thirty-three seconds.



Seriously,

"only those organisms already sheltered in burrows or in water were left alive"

What about Mosasaurs and Ichthyosaurs?

[Sabertooth]

FYI

[Poohbah]

According to new research led by a University of Colorado at Boulder geophysicist, a giant asteroid that hit the coast of Mexico 65 million years ago probably incinerated all the large dinosaurs that were alive at the time in only a few hours, and only those organisms already sheltered in burrows or in water were left alive.

And, of course, Bush and Halliburton did it.

[DoctorMichael]

"......only those organisms already sheltered in burrows or in water were left alive........."

This explains why the Creationists are still with us.

[Desdemona]

If this is true, then why did the crocodiles, aligators, birds, and other assorted animals traced to that time period survive?

[Old Professer]

I can no more imagine this than I could putting out a charcoal grill with a single ice cube; the deposits of which the author speaks could just as easily been deposited as silt over the course of flux and some several months of time.

[VadeRetro]

The "heat pulse" caused by re-entering ejected matter would have reached around the globe, igniting fires and burning up all terrestrial organisms not sheltered in burrows or in water, he said.

Everything non-burrowing and non-swimming died 65 million years ago? (At least, until such niches were re-occupied by the burrowing/swimming survivors.) That certainly is a potentially falsifiable hypothesis!