Study Provides Compelling Evidence of Single Impact Extinction Theory

ectotherm writes to tell us that a new study at the University of Missouri-Columbia claims to provide compelling evidence that a single meteor impact was the cause of animal extinction 65 million years ago. From the article: "MacLeod and his co-investigators studied sediment recovered from the Demerara Rise in the Atlantic Ocean northeast of South America, about 4,500 km (approximately 2,800 miles) from the impact site on the Yucatan Peninsula. Sites closer to and farther from the impact site have been studied, but few intermediary sites such as this have been explored."

Comments

Wombats

[Anonymous Coward]

I suspect Wombats were somehow involved.

65 million?

[grub]

65 million years is crazy-talk, that's 64,994,000 years before God made the Earth!

Re:65 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

It looks like there must be some global creationist group that is directing traffic to the story, as every comment makes just that same arguement. I guess the creationist party line is that the "flood" wiped out the dinosaurs.

Maybe they are just hoping that a crapflood will wipe out scientists?

Re:65 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Young Earth Creationists say that the Earth was created 6000 years ago, they're talking in God-years.

Re:65 million?

[ettlz]

Ever wondered what god the dinosaurs fought wars and slaughtered each other in the name of?

Jehovasaurus.

Next!

Re:65 million?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's something that's always struck me. An omnipotent god could trivially create a zillion photons all the way up to every star in the iniverse. And in fact could create 15 billion years of fake history which would be completely indistinguishable from "real" history.

Which also means that we could also postulate that the universe came into existence 10 seconds ago, complete with this comment half written.

Re:65 million?

[truckaxle]

This reminds me of an incident at the San Diego museum of Natural History. There was a display of Therizinosaurus. A group of kids were admiring the display when one of them asked out loud how old the fossils were. A member of the museum staff was walking by and overheard the question and quickly answer "72 million and 14 years".

That answer satisfied most, but after a few seconds another asked how could they ever identify the age so precisely. The staff member responded "Well when I started work here they told me that it was 72 million years old and I have worked here for 14 years so now it is 72 million and 14 years old."

Re:65 million?

[geobeck]

...there are over 1,000,000,000 Catholics in the world alone.

You mean in addition to the Catholics on other worlds?

Yes, I know what you mean, but the placement of your modifier says something else.

Re:65 million?

[cyberscan]

"They are only biased in the same way that a jury might be made biased upon seeing an overwhelming amount of evidence. They have reached their conclusions based on the large amount of compelling evidence, what have you reached your upon?"

I base mine on a compelling amount of evidence. What is your evidence?

Re:65 million?

[cyberscan]

"there is equal amount of evidence for other possibilities regarding the origin of life on this planet. What evidence and for what other possibilities?" Yes there is an equal amount of evidence demonstrating other possibilities. There is also little scientific evidence that points to evolution as the source off all life on this planet. Many cultures have reords of the great flood and other biblical events. There is physical evidence of other biblical events such as the sulfer balls from the site where Sodom and Gommorrah was beleived to have existed. As far as other possibilities are concerned, these possibilities include a supreme being creating life on this planet or life from beyond this planet bringing life here. I can go on and on with various forms of evidence, but most here have made up their minds about what they want to believe. I also have better things to do than spend my arguing back and forth with people who are stuck on one ideology. Yes, I was once an atheist, howeveronce I was open minded enough to look at evindence and records from many different sources and have changed my mind. By the way, I do have a college education in the sciences and many other scientists also believe in a Supreme being. One such Scientists is the father of modern calculus. His name is Isaac Newton. Does this mean that I agree with what the fundamentalist Christians believe? No It doesn't. In fact, my beliefs are in many ways very different from what most people call Christian. In fact, there is a huge difference between what the original biblical texts say and what most Christians THINK they say. Knowlege of ancient customs and idioms is essential in understanding what the Scriptures say. I do not approach any subject with blind faith. I base my belifs on what I have studied in the past.

big news... but wrong

[zappepcs]

Dinosaurs were not killed off in a mass extinction 65 million years ago... many of them survived and are currently employed by the *AA and associated groups.

Re:big news... but wrong

[CreatureComfort]

If you count vultures and snakes, the GP still applies.

*sigh*

[OverlordQ]

I was *not* a meteor impact that killed the dinosaurs, it was global warming. Let's examine the facts here, with nearly everybody driving around Bedrock in their souped up SUVs, you can imagine all the CO2 those things put out, not to mention the contributing factor of mass extinctions due to consumption of racks of ribs at drive-ins.

Re:*sigh*

[anzha]

You're confused. That was the synapsids in the Permian with their unchecked Volcano Maker Pro users.

The KT Event was a case of the dinos getting waaaaaaaaaaaay too excited over their Orbital Dynamics for Dummies books.

A tad bit more seriously. Take that Gerta Keller!

Re:*sigh*

[Woldry]

But I'm already driving as much as I can!

I call BS

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Look at the film. You can see another meteor on the grassy knoll.

MacLeod?

[rainer_d]

Hell, he's probably witnessed it himself.

How it really happened...

[Anonymous Coward]

65 million years ago...

Dino 1: Wii is the best dino console.
Dino 2: No. The Wii graphics suck. Xbox 360 is awesome.
Dino 3: Wii and Xbox 360 both suck. Playstation 3 with Cell processor rules. Plus we have BluRay.
Dino 1: PS3 is too expensive and there aren't enough blue diodes. All dinosaurs can afford Wii though. It great!
Dino 2: Meh, PS3 is expensive and Wii doesn't do hidef. Xbox 360 sits right in the middle and saves the day. Go 360, go!

God: Ok, that does it. No more dinosaurs.

Re:But....

[InsaneProcessor]

God has a sense of humor. When he created everything, he figured that there would be some idiots (we call them scientists but not all fall into the idiots class) that wouldn't believe the truth so He created a past that they could track down and say "see, there is no creation, just evolution" just to keep them busy.

--
Liberalisim is an absurd ideology that displays the lack of knowledge of history.

Re:back in college

[gravy.jones]

I have heard it said that when God cast out Satan from heaven that his impact on the earth is the same meteoric impact that scientists believe wiped out the dinosaurs.

Re:engineers and religion

[ettlz]

Oh, so it's not

1. design it;
2. model it;
3. build it;
4. test it;
5. pray it stays up?

oblig Bill Hicks

[BitterAndDrunk]

'Sure.' Dinosaurs? ..... 'God put those there to test our faith.'
I think God put you here to test my faith, dude. You believe that?
'Uh huh.'
Does that trouble anyone here? The idea that God might be fuckin' with our heads? Anyone have trouble sleeping restfully with that thought in their heads?
God's running around, burying fossils: 'Hu hu ho. We'll see who believes in me now, ha HA. I'm a prankster god. I am killing me. Ho ho ho ho.'
You know, you die, you go to St. Peter, 'Did you you believe in dinosaurs?'
Well, you know, there was fossils everywhere. [Bill makes sound effects with his mic] KOOM Aaaahhhh. 'What are you, an idiot? God was FUCKING with you! Giant flying lizards, you moron! That's one of God's easiest jokes!'
'It seemed so plausibleeeee! Ahhhhhhhh!' Bound for the lake of fire. . . . "

We miss you Bill . . . please tell the flying saucers to drop you off for another show.

Weird

[pagaboy]

40 responses and not a single noodly appendage in sight. Is everyone OK?

Re:But....

[ray-auch]

Look, we know the mice paid for it to be built around 2 million years ago - it says so in The Book.

But, lets look at both theories anyway.

1. the mice, 2m years ago, pay for the planet to be built to look like it is billions of years old, with fake fossils etc. buried as part of the construction process

2. God makes the planet 6k years ago, with dinosaurs and everything, then floods it when Noah's got two of everything into the ark. Except Noah forgot about all the dinosaurs, because they were small and easy to miss, especially the sauropods (behemoth) which Noah thought were on board but were hiding behind some reeds. Oh, sorry that was Job:40. Oops, Job was after the flood. Guess the dinosaurs maybe made it onto the ark after all. Seems that even the ID guys can't agree on that one.

Anyhow, lets look at the supporting evidence, ie. the fossil record:

Could it be fakes buried by the (far more advanced than us) builders of the planet to look millions of years old ? Difficult to disprove that one.

Could it be the victims of the flood buried in the sediments from the flood ? Hmmm, yep could fit too.

Ah, teeny weeny problem with the second one. People - lack of. According to the biblical accounts, lots of people should have perished in the flood alongside the dinosaurs. So, people bones should be common in the fossil record alongside the dinosaurs. Nope.

Since that just about wraps it up for the flood, we're left with the super advanced Magratheans building it all 2million years ago for the mice. All cleverly faked to look millions of years older.

QED - it was the mice.

Now try to disprove the mice / Magratheans theory you crazy Darwinists.

Ahh... the Emerill Lagasse Theory

[jakel2k]

Emerill "Bang! Creatures everywhere... don't worry about getting some in the lakes and rivers, only enriches things later...okay folks now stay tuned, after the commercial we'll whip up Man in less that 24 hours."

Last Tuesday

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

That's something that's always struck me. An omnipotent god could trivially create a zillion photons all the way up to every star in the iniverse. And in fact could create 15 billion years of fake history which would be completely indistinguishable from "real" history.

This is often referred to as "Last Tuesdayism." The idea that the universe was created last Tuesday with the appearance of being 15 billion years old is logically impossible to falsify. Since it cannot be falsified, it is not science, but that doesn't stop the creationists from bringing up the idea. They never seem to understand that a corollary of it is that God is a liar.

There are also constant Usenet flamewars, religious jihads, and university campus riots between the Last Tuesdayists and the Last Mondayists. They're all heretics, of course. All right-thinking, intelligent people know that the universe was created by my cat Marvin three weeks ago Thursday.

Re:Garbage In, Garbage Out

[TheCabal]

I think I lost some IQ points reading this. I'm going to go off and install Win95 now.

Re:Garbage In, Garbage Out

[Chris Burke]

So, how is it possible that birds were once as big as 747's?

The 747s were smaller back then. Duh!