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Global Warming May Have Killed the Dinosaurs
The Fun Guy sent in a link to the American Society for Microbiology site, your leading news source for everything between nano and macro. The site is featuring a story about new research into the KT barrier extinction: the period in history where the dinosaurs went extinct, along with a number of other families of species. For a number of years scientists have theorized that an impact on the Yucatan peninsula was responsible for the species crash, but microbiological examination of marine organisms of the time indicate life persisted for another 300,000 years after the 'Chicxulub impact'. The researchers at Princeton who made this discovery theorize that global warming caused by a volcanic eruption in India is a more likely culprit for the world-wide devastation. The article generalizes that there is no 'smoking gun' for this event, and further research is required.
Comments like this remind me that I need to stop procrastinating and get that six-pack installed on the 1972 Dodge Hybrid.
I measure fuel efficiency in peak horse power.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
they concluded that the heat of re-entering rock on ballistic trajectories would have heated almost the entire atmosphere to incandescence
No, that's not what they concluded.
I've seen talks by archaeobiologists who assert that the dinosaurs were simply broiled by the heat coming from the atmosphere
That may be, but then the still survived for another 300ky.
It is also consistent with the fossil record,
Well, no, it's not consistent with the fossil record.
Disclaimer: I am not a paleontologist, I'm only an astrophysicist.
Given the mess astrophysics is in right now, it seems to me you could learn something from paleontology.