Study: Dinosaurs Died Within Hours After Asteroid Hit

University of Colorado News Center ^ | May 24, 2004

[LibWhacker]

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.

The six-mile-in-diameter asteroid is thought to have hit Chicxulub in the Yucatan, striking with the energy of 100 million megatons of TNT, said chief author and Researcher Doug Robertson of the department of geological sciences and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. 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.

A paper on the subject was published by Robertson in the May-June issue of the Bulletin of the Geological Society of America. Co-authors include CU-Boulder Professor Owen Toon, University of Wyoming Professors Malcolm McKenna and Jason Lillegraven and California Academy of Sciences Researcher Sylvia Hope.

"The kinetic energy of the ejected matter would have dissipated as heat in the upper atmosphere during re-entry, enough heat to make the normally blue sky turn red-hot for hours," said Robertson. 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.

The evidence of terrestrial ruin is compelling, said Robertson, noting that tiny spheres of melted rock are found in the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or KT, boundary around the globe. The spheres in the clay are remnants of the rocky masses that were vaporized and ejected into sub-orbital trajectories by the impact.

A nearly worldwide clay layer laced with soot and extra-terrestrial iridium also records the impact and global firestorm that followed the impact.

The spheres, the heat pulse and the soot all have been known for some time, but their implications for survival of organisms on land have not been explained well, said Robertson. Many scientists have been curious about how any animal species such as primitive birds, mammals and amphibians managed to survive the global disaster that killed off all the existing dinosaurs.

Robertson and colleagues have provided a new hypothesis for the differential pattern of survival among land vertebrates at the end of the Cretaceous. They have focused on the question of which groups of vertebrates were likely to have been sheltered underground or underwater at the time of the impact.

Their answer closely matches the observed patterns of survival. Pterosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs had no obvious adaptations for burrowing or swimming and became extinct. In contrast, the vertebrates that could burrow in holes or shelter in water -- mammals, birds, crocodilians, snakes, lizards, turtles and amphibians -- for the most part survived.

Terrestrial vertebrates that survived also were exposed to the secondary effects of a radically altered, inhospitable environment. "Future studies of early Paleocene events on land may be illuminated by this new view of the KT catastrophe," said Robertson.

[chilepepper]

Velikovsky was a dolt

No he wasn't. He was a very serious, sober, and intelligent medical doctor willing to look at things from a perspective outside that of the the academic institutions. most scientific establishments are designed to exclude new ideas (that is what they are SUPPOSED to do), and Velikovsky's ideas were just too far fetched, but he was a pioneer in trying to tie together information from very different fields...

His research was non-the-less very thorough and his ideas were worth considering.

Albert Einstein was a big fan -- one of Velikovsky's books was next to his bedside when Einstein died -- but he did not necessarily "believe" what Velikovsky suggested, but was willing to entertain the possibility to see where it took things if true. this is the way one should approach supposedly wild-arse theories: sometimes they will be shown to be true and open up science to the NEXT level.

what Velikovsky was to his era, Rupert Sheldrake is to our own...

[DB]

Why a decade?

It didn't stay super hot for anywhere remotely that long.

Plants start recovering very quickly.

[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.

LOL! When I read this LATE last night I thought that scientists were speculating the entire surface of the earth stayed hot for more than a decade. Disregard my cynical earlier comments!

[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.”

I read this the same way swilhelm73 did. Hey, it was late....

[R. Scott]

Coffee! Coffee!
Or - early to bed.

[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!

[ASA Vet]

The Russians had designs for 100 megaton H-bombs,

The largest they detonated was 50 MT.

[qam1]

According to new research led by a University of Colorado at Boulder geophysicist,

Always Physicist and Geologist that push this ridiculous hypothesis, Never Paleontologist.  

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,

Bull, For one some Dinosaurs made it into the Tertiary (Examples here and here)

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

Birds & ungulate mammals were able to burrow???

"The kinetic energy of the ejected matter would have dissipated as heat in the upper atmosphere during re-entry, enough heat to make the normally blue sky turn red-hot for hours," said Robertson. 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.

So not only were the birds & ungulate mammals able to burrow, They were able to stay underground for more than 10 years???

Plus even if Alligators and Frogs were underwater during the impact wouldn't they die when they came up to breath? Plus the heat would have quickly evaporated the lakes and ponds they lived in.

The evidence of terrestrial ruin is compelling, said Robertson, noting that tiny spheres of melted rock are found in the Cretaceous-Tertiary, or KT, boundary around the globe.

Whoppee!! Those spheres are found everywhere not just in the KT boundary.

Here is an example of 2 layers above and below the K-T boundary

A nearly worldwide clay layer laced with soot and extra-terrestrial iridium also records the impact and global firestorm that followed the impact.

Wrong. The nature of the soot doesn't show it was massive amounts of vegetation that burned at the time, In fact it shows the opposite. The soot contains very little charcoal which if a lot of vegetation was burned you would expect a lot of it and Abundant vitrinite (coalified plant tissue) is recorded. Plants can't turn to coal if they are burned!!!

As for the "Extra-terrestrial" iridium layer, iridium can come from volcanoes and the layer at the K-T also contains high arsenic, antimony and selenium levels which are common earthly elements but rare in meteroites. Plus Iridium is missing from the Chicxulub crater itself!!!!!  How can an Asteroid or whatever (It's still not proven to be a meteror crater and it's looking like one less and less) that caused the Chicxulub crater produce a iridium spike around the world when it didn't contain iridium?  

The spheres, the heat pulse and the soot all have been known for some time, but their implications for survival of organisms on land have not been explained well,

Sure it has, I T   D I D N 'T   H A P P E N.

Their answer closely matches the observed patterns of survival. Pterosaurs and non-avian dinosaurs had no obvious adaptations for burrowing or swimming and became extinct.

Neither did birds, Yet they lived.

In contrast, the vertebrates that could burrow in holes or shelter in water -- mammals, birds, crocodilians, snakes, lizards, turtles and amphibians -- for the most part survived.

And what about all the Dinosaurs like Mesosaurs they were able to swim? How come they went extinct?

Terrestrial vertebrates that survived also were exposed to the secondary effects of a radically altered, inhospitable environment. "Future studies of early Paleocene events on land may be illuminated by this new view of the KT catastrophe," said Robertson.

There already has been studies, That's why most Paleontologist don't believe this dumb hypothesis anymore.

[qam1]

Bull, For one some Dinosaurs made it into the Tertiary (Examples here and here)

The link for the 1st "Here" is here

[Swordmaker]

Albert Einstein was a big fan -- one of Velikovsky's books was next to his bedside when Einstein died -- but he did not necessarily "believe" what Velikovsky suggested, but was willing to entertain the possibility to see where it took things if true.

Einstein wrote the preface to Velikovsky's "Earth in Upheaval" and stated that it and his other work, "Worlds in Collision" were the most important works in science produced to date.

One test of a theory is how well does it make predictions about unknown but knowable things.

At the time Velikovsky wrote "Worlds in Collision", astronomers were convinced that Venus was a (water vapor) cloud covered, ocean world, only slightly warmer than Earth, with a very similar atmosphere. Science fiction writers of the era, including such hard science based authors as Roberty Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, were busy churning out novels based on an oceanic and tropical Venus. And why not? This model was the accepted opinion of all "rational" astronomers, based on the difference between Venus' calcuated "Solar load" and the measured "Solar Load" of Earth. In this model, temperatures would average about 20 degrees hotter than Earth's averages.

Velikovsky, using his theoretical model, predicted (in 1953) that Venus would be extremely hot, hot enough to melt lead and tin, have an atmosphere that would be many times higher pressure than Earth's and primarily made up of Carbon Dioxide with clouds of hydrocarbons and aldehydes. He also made the statement that the heat was from the core of the "new planet" exhibiting high temperatures because it had had little time to cool since its "creation" in the bowels of Jupiter.

In fact, it was THIS theory of Velikovsky's that was the primary example used by his detractors and attackers that, in their words, demonstrated his ignorance of science and his stupidity. One of those attackers was a science fiction and science writer named Isaac Asimov. The scientific community and the world's press, gleefully and enthusiastically piled on in their efforts to discredit Velikovsky's impeccable scholarship on history and mythology.

When we were finally able to send space probes to Venus (attempts made from 1964 to 1978), much to the scientists' surprise, they found that the surface temperature of Venus was 476 degrees Celsius (888 degrees Fahrenheit) at 90 Bars (90 times the atmospheric pressure of Earth's atmosphere at sea level!), that the atmosphere was primarily composed of Carbon Dioxide, and that the clouds contain a surprising amount of hydrocarbons.

The "accepted" explanation for the high temperature (that was not predictied by anyone other than Velikovsky) was "Global Warming" caused by the cloud layer of "Greenhouse gasses." In the "orthodox" view, Venus is heated by absorbing more infra-red from the sun that is captured and contained by the cloud layer of "greenhouse gasses," which, not surprisingly, supports the eco-freaks theories of Terrestrial Global Warming where Venus is used as the "Horrible Example" of what Earth will be like if we don't approve the Kyoto protocals RIGHT NOW! However...

Venus, as a planet system, radiates MORE heat than can be accounted for by its total solar load. In other words, it puts OUT more heat than it takes IN.... shooting down completely the orthodox model and indicating an INTERNAL SOURCE OF HEAT.

Sounds like Velikovsky has made a theoretical slam dunk from the three point line to me.

[Aracelis]

After three in the morning you "could" show a little mercy. ;)

Ah, but science never sleeps...in fact, the whole subject has given me a sleep disorder. Up every 2 hours, although, answers to complex problems usually come to me in those moments of twilight sleep where the subconscious and the conscious briefly intertwine. :)

[Aracelis]

It would seem I've not kept up on things, and there is evidence for massive global carbon sequestration. Shame on me. :(

Carbon Isotope Excursion in Atmospheric CO2 at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary: Evidence from Terrestrial Sediments
Issn: 0883-1351 Journal: PALAIOS Volume: 15 Issue: 4 Pages: 314-322
Authors: ARENS, NAN CRYSTAL, JAHREN, A. HOPE
DOI: 10.1043/0883-1351(2000)015<0314:CIEIAC>2.0.CO;2

ABSTRACT
A carbon isotope excursion immediately above the clay layer that defines the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K/T) boundary has been reported in marine sediments world wide. This paper reports a similar carbon isotope excursion recorded by C3 land plants from three temporally-controlled, stratigraphically-constrained terrestrial sections in the Western Interior of North America (Garfield County, Montana, and Slope County, North Dakota). Carbon isotope measurements of bulk sedimentary organic carbon were well-correlated with those of isolated plant cuticle, suggesting that the terrestrial organic carbon signature in these sediments parallels that of plant cuticle. Carbon isotope signatures were also independent of rock type and depositional environment, showing that the carbon isotope signature of plants, although altered, is not biased taphonomically. Because the signature in terrestrial facies records the isotope composition of paleoatmospheric CO2, this record—combined with that from marine sections—offers additional insight into changes in carbon cycling underlying the K/T negative carbon isotope excursion. For example, radiometric age determinations from the Hell Creek Road locality in Montana bracket the atmospheric carbon isotopic recovery between 65.00 ± 0.05 Ma and 65.16 ± 0.04 Ma. This reflects a more rapid recovery for the terrestrial biosphere than for that of the marine realm, perhaps due to lower extinction rates in land plants than in marine primary producers.

[Aracelis]

Also, if you are of a mind (and certainly not at 3 AM), you may wish to check out this link to Carbon Isotope Modeling.

[Free Trapper]

Thanks for the link.

Got to it about 2:30 AM and it "is" interesting.Put it on "favorites" so it's easy to find and I can take in a bit at a time.

Doc's had me on pain meds for quite some time now and my mind seems to have lost some connections.That site may give me the mental exercise I need to get things clicking again.

I've noticed,that in waking moments,my mind seems to clear and I even reclaim my vocabulary for a short time that I thought was lost forever.

The human mind is a strange thing.....how much even more-so it must be for liberals. :o)

[Ichneumon]

Einstein wrote the preface to Velikovsky's "Earth in Upheaval"

No he didn't.

and stated that it and his other work, "Worlds in Collision" were the most important works in science produced to date.

No he didn't.

Would you like to share any other hallucinations with us?

On the contrary, when Velikovsky gave Einstein a copy of his manuscript for "Worlds in Collision", Einstein's reply letter bluntly said:

"However it is evident to every sensible physicist that these catastrophes can have nothing to do with the planet Venus and that also the direction of the inclination of the terrestrial axis towards the ecliptic could not have undergone a considerable change without the total destruction of the entire earth’s crust. Your arguments in this regard are so weak as opposed to the mechanical-astronomical ones, that no expert will be able to take them seriously."
-- Albert Einstein, July 8, 1946 letter to Immanuel Velikovsky

And from an earlier letter after conversations with Velikovsky:

"The reason for the energetic rejection of the opinions presented by you lies not in the assumption that in the motion of the heavenly bodies only gravitation and inertia are the determining factors. The reason for the rejection lies rather in the fact that on the basis of this assumption it was possible to calculate the temporal changes of star locations in the planetary system with an unimaginably great precision.

"Against such precise knowledge, speculations of the kind as were advanced by you do not come into consideration by an expert. Therefore your book must appear to an expert as an attempt to mislead the public. I must admit that I myself had at first this impression, too. Only afterwards it became clear to me that intentional misleading was entirely foreign to you."

-- Albert Einstein, August 27, 1952 letter to Immanuel Velikovsky

(Emphasis in original.)

One test of a theory is how well does it make predictions about unknown but knowable things.

Unfortunately for Velikovsky's fanciful notions, the fact that he got lucky on a few of his imprecise predictions about Venus (e.g. "it's hot", etc.) -- albeit for the wrong reasons -- doesn't change the fact that most of his other associated predictions and proposed events/mechanisms (like Venus flying around the solar system like a mad billiard ball) are impossible pure twaddle and/or flat wrong.

See for example:

Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision

AN ANTIDOTE TO VELIKOVSKIAN DELUSIONS

TOP TEN REASONS WHY VELIKOVSKY IS WRONG

Is the Planet Venus Young?

FAQ: Velikovsky Critiqued

Sounds like Velikovsky has made a theoretical slam dunk from the three point line to me.

Sounds like you're a poor scorekeeper due to your failure to understand the rules, to me.

To get the full flavor of Velikovsky's "crank" rating, see his 1946 paper arguing "the fallacy of the law of gravitation": COSMOS WITHOUT GRAVITATION: ATTRACTION, REPULSION AND ELECTROMAGNETIC CIRCUMDUCTION IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM . Arguing against the existence of gravity, per se, is itself a doozy catapulting Velikosky high up onto the list of all-time scientific cranks, but even the details of his paper are real knee-slappers. For example:

...the following facts are incompatible with the theory of gravitation:

[...]

5. The weight of the atmosphere is constantly changing as the changing barometric pressure indicates... The semidiurnal changes in barometric pressure are not explainable by the mechanistic principles of gravitation and the heat effect of solar radiation. The cause of these variations is unknown... One maximum is at 10 a.m., the other at 10 p.m.; the two minima are at 4 a.m. and 4 p.m. The heating effect of the sun can explain neither the time when the maxima appear nor the time of the minima of these semidiurnal variations.

One word: Tides. The tidal effect upon the atmosphere is indeed the result of "the mechanistic principles of gravitation". Velikovsky was just too ignorant to know it. Not, of course, that his lack of knowledge stopped him from claiming to have overturned much of conventional science and replaced it with his own fanciful (but totally unworkable) ideas.

I stand by my original assessment -- on scientific issues, Velikovsky was a dolt.

[Junior]

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.

So not only were the birds & ungulate mammals able to burrow, They were able to stay underground for more than 10 years??

I think you misread this line. The scientists have been speculating for more than a decade.

[Junior]

Neither did birds, Yet they lived.

Some owls burrow. Other birds live in caves.

[Rebelbase]

Tsar Bomba.

[Free Trapper]

When I noticed your FR handle,I thought I'd see what Google would turn up on the "dragon killer" for fun.

Your FR homepage was #2 on the Google search. :)

Please do define yourself though.Ichneumon the fly...wasp...dragon killer...mongoose.....what be you?

[SauronOfMordor]

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

It would have been very hot for a while, but the effect would have lasted hours, not days or weeks. So anything caught aboveground in the open would have been broiled, but if you could get to cover or get in the water, you would have been all right.

What the theory doesn't cover includes why we didn't see extinctions of significant numbers of plant species, and why NO dinosaurs survived, even aquatic and swamp-dwelling ones