[SunkenCiv]

Night Comes to the Cretaceous
by James Lawrence Powell
reviewed Nov. 24, 1998
by Clark R. Chapman

[W]ith no generally accepted explanation for the dinosaurs' sudden demise, there was no broad, unified defense of an alternative to the Alvarez proposal. Nevertheless, as Powell documents, it was no easy road to acceptance of the idea, especially among paleontologists. One prominent astronomer even argued against the impact hypothesis... Powell finally realizes that the burden of proof has shifted to the anti-impactors... This is a well-written, intelligent book, accessible to the interested layperson but also fully footnoted for geoscientists who want more technical details. It is a thorough account of that portion of the K-T battle, now won, that was fought on a geological turf.

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Night Comes to the Cretaceous by James Lawrence Powell

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[SunkenCiv]

"Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" by Duncan Steel
review by Clark R. Chapman
1996

Although Steel disarmingly introduces Chapter 8 as devil's advocacy that "many will find bizarre," he has a more serious purpose: it is to gain some acceptance (in this case concerning the distant past, which will always be shrouded in uncertainty) of a theory, promoted by Steel's British colleague Victor Clube, for which the word "bizarre" would be an understatement. Clube believes that the modern history of Western civilization (one example is the Protestant reformation) has been shaped chiefly by comet storms which, furthermore, he believes are increasing at the present time. Indeed, Steel himself approvingly quotes Clube's theory that the Dark Ages commenced as a result of "conflagrations" due to the so-called Taurid complex of meteors and comet fragments.

Here is where professional meteoriticists and planetary scientists should take note. Steel attributes many impact occurrences (including the Farmington meteorite and the Tunguska blast) to the Taurid complex, an ill-defined and inherently difficult- to-observe heterogeneous belt of debris, orbiting in the inner solar system, derived from a giant comet that he believes was disrupted about 5,000 years ago. Encke's comet and several meteor showers are the primary observables. A theme that runs through this book, and pops up in subdued form even in some of the chapters I label as being authoritative, is that coherent clusters or streams of cometary debris -- the Taurid complex is a particular, current example -- somehow dominate the terrestrial impact rate, and invalidate the average rates (and hence hazard of future impacts) deduced by Gene Shoemaker and others...

...In conclusion, I recommend buying "Rogue Asteroids and Doomsday Comets" along with a pair of scissors. Cut out and throw away pp. 60-64 and 70-73 from Chapter 4, pp. 114-116 and 125-136 from Chapter 7, and all of Chapters 6 and 8. Then have an enjoyable read, being just a little wary, however, whenever the Taurid complex is mentioned.

Yeah, book mutilation is a scholarly practice.

Chapman mentioned in posts 36, 66, and 67.