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Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction

Posted by kdawson on from the hid-under-a-rock dept.

mmmscience sends along coverage from the Examiner on evidence that some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s) at the end of the Cretaceous period. Here is the original journal article. "A US paleontologist is challenging one of the field's greatest theories: the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Jim Fassett, a paleontologist who holds an emeritus position at the US Geological Survey, recently published a paper in Palaeontologia Electronica with evidence that points to a pocket of dinosaurs that somehow survived in remote parts New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years past the end of the Cretaceous period. If this theory holds up, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age."

2 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. cautionary notes from a paleo geek by Dr_Snugglebunny · · Score: 5, Interesting

    2 points to be aware of: 1. The journal this is published in is not held in high esteem by most paleontologists. This may be telling; I imagine the paper was rejected by several other journals before ending up here. Peer review seems a little light at PE. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but calls for caution. 2. Everything hangs on the authors' interpretation of the age of the sediments; the bones don't seem reworked (i.e. moved around from older sediments), which is one source of error, but he could be wrong with the radiometric age estimation, which even in the best cases has a moderate margin of error. BUT it remains an interesting question of any dinosaurs survived long past the extinction; most of our picture of the K-T event comes from central/western North America, so who knows what happened elsewhere.

  2. Re:Other findings. by nyctopterus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The problem with the "already in decline" arguments is that there are statistical effects that make sudden extinctions look gradual. This has pretty much been demonstrated to be the case for Late Cretaceous dinosaurs (I don't know about ammonites).

    People want to cling to the K/T extinction being a mystery for some reason. It just isn't anymore. If you want a good mystery, the Permian-Triassic extinction event is bigger, and still (relatively) unexplained.