Wow, in a weird coincidence, two stories came out today about impacts and tsunamis.
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Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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November 15th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
When I heard the Crescent City story on NPR news earlier this evening it sounded like they said “Two dogs were torn apart and several goats were set loose in Crescent City today…” Which sounded to me like a really interesting news story. I wondered why they weren’t mentioned again in the report. I now realize that it was “docks,” not dogs and “boats,” not goats.
November 15th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
Dogs and Goats? What kind of Satanic, animal-sacrificing tsunami was this?! lol
November 16th, 2006 at 1:01 am
Phil: Is there really “mounting” evidence that the Chicxulub impact didn’t kill the dinosaurs. I know that Gerta Keller keeps saying that it didn’t, but do other researchers agree?
November 16th, 2006 at 2:52 am
Luke, although I can’t speak for Phil, it’s important to look at what he actually said:
“there’s been mounting evidence for a while that the impact did not do the deed by itself.” “By itself” indicating that there were likely other important factors involved besides the just impact even assuming it had a major role.
November 16th, 2006 at 4:08 am
Of course all the animals left the area prior to the tsunami and failed, yet again, to warn the poor humans! We should fund a tsunami/earthquake watchgroup of pet psychics to read the animals and that would be a truly effective earthquake/tsunami warning system.
*removes tongue from cheek*
November 16th, 2006 at 7:49 am
Yo!
I’m not a bad astronomer, but I’m a Stunningly Mediocre Paleontologist.
There’s two important data to keep in mind about the Keller article. The first is that the end of the Age of Dinosaurs was what you might call a “noisy” time. There was at least one, probably more, bolide impacts. There were the Deccan eruptions which were neither small nor short in nature. The Atlantic Ocean was also opening up, and with this change of sea level there were a host of related environmental changes. You could make the argument that maybe one thing or another was the crucial factor that led to the demise of the dinosaurs, but you’d be just pooh-poohing a lot of other information.
The second is Keller’s data. Notice this is NOT in the peer-reviewed literature! This is a newspaper article, and hence not held to the same standards. As far as I can tell, he could be talking about new data, or he could be talking about his old work on the subject. If it’s the former, I’d sure like to see it in Nature or Science or somewhere. If it’s the latter, I recall that there were questions about the research. While I did not read the article myself, I heard secondhand his data were taken from a single locality and he was not very forthcoming about sharing them. Keller has been dismissive of the bolide impact hypothesis for a long time, and naturally people were very curious to see what he’d got. I would treat this news report with caution and look for the published data.
On a related note, my friend and former instructor Dr. Richard Muller is giving a talk on the bolide hypothesis this week. Richard wasn’t directly involved in the Alvarez’s work, but he’s done some related work and he’s mentioned in T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, Walter Alvarez’s popular press book on the subject. If you get University of California Television or you have a big enough dish, you can check him out:
http://www.uctv.tv/schedule3.asp?summary=show&keyword=11829
November 16th, 2006 at 9:16 am
What, again I missed the announcement, “Surfs up!!!”
Phil, isn’t it obvious, there was a rapid evolutionary development after the Chicxulub impact, driving a tribe of raptors to sentience, who developed a high civilization, then went hunting for trophies. I’ll bet we discover a raptor house burried under radioactive debris from that period, with tyraunosaurus heads mounted on the walls.
“Well, dang, they were just standing there, waiting to get shot,,,”
,,,or maybe, some time travelers needed to go back and bring home some really big game,,,this is what happens when we over hunt species,,,
GAry 7
“,,,removes toungue from ear,,,”
November 16th, 2006 at 9:32 am
Phil,
WRT the Chicxulub story, I’m with Luke — the “mounting” evidence is really just a pile of press releases put out by Gerta Keller and her co-workers. Check the peer-reviewed science, and you’ll see they’re not getting any confirmatory studies from anybody else. The problem is that Keller & co. keep working from samples in the disturbed geology near the Chicxulub crater (where post-impact landslides and tsunamis and such make the stratigraphy pretty tangled). Nobody’s been able to find data that corroborates their take on things anywhere else.
Lorne
November 16th, 2006 at 10:50 am
I don’t know much about the Keller study and yes she’s part of a group that seems to be unusually fond of press releases but this is still a very complicated event that many feel was never adequately explained by an impact alone. I could go on for a very long time here but let me just mention a couple things. Frogs, crocodilians and birds made it through the event relatively unscathed. Today these are some of the most sensitive groups we have with respect to changing/degrading environments. Bob Bakker has been harping on this for years. Many plant groups (in particular ferns) didn’t take much of a hit either. Neither of these seem to be consistent with the large scale global turmoil that impact-only people talk about. (in fact last time I checked there was very little agreement on exactly what the effects of the impact would have been)
There have always been a fair number of workers with questions about the impact alone idea. In particular, the work of Norm MacLeod is very good. Check out
Mac Leod, N. 1996. K/T Redux. Paeobiology. 22(3) pp.311-371.
and
Mac Leod et al. 1997. The Cretaceous Tertiary Biotic Transition. Volume 154, Number 2, 1997, pp. 265-292(28)
I know these are older but the arguments are still valid and I don’t have time to look up anything newer right now gotta go to seminar.
Paul
November 16th, 2006 at 1:20 pm
Oops forgot the journal for that last citation it’s
The Journal of the Geological Society.
That’s what I get for being in a hurry
November 16th, 2006 at 2:40 pm
“There’s two important data to keep in mind about the Keller article. The first is that the end of the Age of Dinosaurs was what you might call a “noisy†time. There was at least one, probably more, bolide impacts. There were the Deccan eruptions which were neither small nor short in nature. The Atlantic Ocean was also opening up, and with this change of sea level there were a host of related environmental changes. You could make the argument that maybe one thing or another was the crucial factor that led to the demise of the dinosaurs, but you’d be just pooh-poohing a lot of other information.”
Daniel Synder
Ever watch a prizefight?
Rarely does one shot ever take out the other side.
(it happens, but not that often.)
Instead, it often is a combo of hits or a weaking of the one of the sides, due to punishment inflicted, that decides the victor.
I’ts a left, right, left, then uppercut that floors the big dude.
Talk about a “few” bad years…lol
Lunatik
November 16th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
We’re getting conflicting dates on the Dino demise, anywhere from a 1000 years to a million. Would be nice to see just ONE analytical lab involved in the dating process, for many different samples of strata worldwide.
I expect the asteroid impact just happened at an inoportune time, perhaps coincident with a solar maximum cycle, declining magnetic field strength, hydrogen sulphide release, etc. Will be interesting to see the next ten years research results.
Gary 7