Dinosaur death theory 'just a myth' -

The Telegraph - UK ^ | March 2, 2004 | Roger Highfield

[UnklGene]

Dinosaur death theory 'just a myth'-

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor (Filed: 02/03/2004)

The popular belief that a vast crater near Mexico is the scar left by an asteroid which wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago is questioned today.

The Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan Peninsula led many scientists to conclude that fast-moving debris from the asteroid's impact would have superheated the atmosphere so that vegetation burst into flames over much of the planet.

According to this theory, ground temperatures soared to about 1,000C, igniting forest fires across the world and boiling land organisms alive. The soot and smoke thrown into the atmosphere may have helped block sunlight, causing global cooling and plunging the planet into winter.

But a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by Dr Gerta Keller of Princeton University, Dr Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel and Dr Wolfgang Stinnesbeck from the University of Karlsruhe, suggests the crater predates the mass extinction by 300,000 years.

Their conclusion came after they studied strata in a core drilled from the crater.

The team suggests a more complex series of events such as an additional asteroid impact, perhaps in the Shiva Crater in India, volcanism, and climate change.

[Joe Bonforte]

Do they really think their dating is that exact? 300,000 years is only 1/2 % of 60,000,000 years. I would figure that to be within the range of error, or close to it.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

Wait a minute, something's not right here!
If the Dinosaurs lived from 200,000,000 years ago to 65,000,000 years ago, and the asteroid hit 300,000 years BEFORE the dinosaurs became extinct, how did the dinosaurs survive the asteroid impact that is supposed to have killed them all!

Inquiring minds want to know!

[microgood]

Their conclusion came after they studied strata in a core drilled from the crater.

Where do you get jobs like this? I want to speculate and theorize wildly and get paid to do it.

[DentsRun]

If the Dinosaurs lived from 200,000,000 years ago to 65,000,000 years ago, and the asteroid hit 300,000 years BEFORE the dinosaurs became extinct, how did the dinosaurs survive the asteroid impact that is supposed to have killed them all!

I've heard some geologists/paleontologists maintain that that the dinosaurs didn't die off in one sudden catastrophic event but that that their disappearance stretched out over two or three million years. Some scientists are now saying that exploding super volcanoes can be just as bad as asteroid impacts.

[Tacis]

"If the Dinosaurs lived from 200,000,000 years ago to 65,000,000 years ago, and the asteroid hit 300,000 years BEFORE the dinosaurs became extinct, how did the dinosaurs survive the asteroid impact that is supposed to have killed them all! "

I forget the details, but an article in the NYT said that it was the fault of the Republicans that all the cute and cuddly dinosaurs died out.

[The Great RJ]

I never bought that comet/asteroid theory because how could it explain why some reptiles, not to mention mammals, escaped the extinction. Alligators and crocs are almost unchanged from the time of the dinosaurs. Why were they spared why other reptilians weren't?

[John Locke]

You might be interested in this, which I pulled off a newsgroup many years ago:

"Nor did a meteor kill off the dinosaurs. The evidence for a meteor impact at all is weak; the evidence that it caused mass extinctions is nonexistent, and the idea that it could cause selective mass extinctions is utterly bogus.

So, it eliminated all of order Dinosauria, while leaving pretty much untouched orders Reptilia, Mammalia, and Amphibia? How? The dinosaurs were the dominant life form; they had radiated into almost every niche and had peopled the world from the arctic to the tropics. The other orders were confined to a few niches, often in competition with the dinosaurs. If any animals whatever were best placed to survive a drastic change in the external conditions, it was the dinosaurs - there were more varieties and they had proven themselves more adaptable.

No: the very fact that they all died out is a great big clue. What did they have in common? Not size, not habitat, not ecological niche: only phylogeny. The cause of their extinction therefore lies within them, not without."

[txhurl]

Well, OK, the Gulf of Mexico impact killed out Texan dinosaurs. If Indians want to claim their own killer asteroid responsible for their extinction, fine.

All politics is local.

[Nick Danger]

[AM2000]

Yeah, their snowmobiles were too loud and the Dinos couldn't sleep and they all died of fatigue.

[Sofa King]

You could become a political analyst on CNN....

[Big Mack]

Actually, they legalized gay unions and the dino's that were died out.

[RightWingAtheist]

It wasn't just the dinosaurs which went extinct. The pterosaurs, to which they were closely related, also died out. Most of the giant sea reptiles-plesiosaurs and mosasaurs-were eliminated as well (icthyosaurs and marine crocodiles had died out about twenty million years earlier), but sea turtles survived. There were some curious inconsistencies in this great extinction. Ammonites were annhiliated, but nautiluses (natilusi?) survived. Marine plankton suffered greatly, but freshwater plankton was largely untouched.

[UnklGene]

I'm a misogynist myself.

[RightWingAtheist]

It's informed speculation based on a careful studying of the evidence. If you want a career where you get to go off on wild tangents, become a fundamentalist preacer.

[Nataku X]

Supervirus.

[RightWingAtheist]

The main argument for the theory was that the blanket of atmospheric dust created by the impact resulted in a sudden cooling and most of the sunlight being reflected back into space, resulting in a chain of catastrophic events. So the dinosaurs were annhilated in an instant according to geological time scale-and an instant on that scale can mean hundreds of thousands of years.

[edsheppa]

300,000 years is only 1/2 % of 60,000,000 years.

They're measuring the 300,000 years relative to the extinction. It's like not remembering the exact year you went to Hawaii but you know it was a year later than when you went to China.

[ovrtaxt]

an instant on that scale can mean hundreds of thousands of years.

Nice spin. You're almost quoting Genesis 1.