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Scientists Find 66-Million-Year-Old Fossils From The Day The Dinosaurs Died (usatoday.com)

"It's like a time capsule of the end of the world," reports USA Today: 66 million years ago, in what's now North Dakota, a group of animals died together, only a few minutes after a huge asteroid smashed into the Earth near present-day Mexico. Scientists Friday announced the discovery of the jumbled, fossilized remains of the animals, all killed when a tsunami-like wave and a torrent of rocks, sand and glass buried them alive.

This graveyard of fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur is a unique, first-of-its-kind discovery from the exact day that life on Earth changed forever, according to the study lead author Robert DePalma, a curator at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History... DePalma added that the find provides spectacular new detail to what is perhaps the most important event to ever affect life on Earth... The asteroid impact and resulting mass extinction, which scientists call the K-T boundary, marked the end of the Cretaceous Era. The aftereffects of that infamous asteroid collision killed 75 percent of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs. It's the planet's most recent mass extinction.

Scientists believe the asteroid was 12 kilometers (7.4 miles) wide, the BBC reports, and that it "hurled billions of tonnes of molten and vaporised rock into the sky in all directions - and across thousands of kilometres." DePalma argues that moment "is tied directly to all of us -- to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet.

"Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs."

114 comments

  1. Re: Okay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well then stop shrugging and take this D

  2. It's the planet's most recent mass extinction.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    other than the Holocene extinction we're currently causing.

  3. Current extinction event.. by slashkitty · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Aren't we in the middle of a current mass extinction event? Only 12 more years to go.

    --
    -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
    1. Re:Current extinction event.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to the same extent that the one that happened back then.

      What we have now is more like some species not being able to reproduce due to the new temperatures and dying out over a few generations instead of the more instant event of a meteorite blasting up all that dust.

    2. Re:Current extinction event.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To the bitter end. Carry on clingers.

    3. Re:Current extinction event.. by slashkitty · · Score: 2

      Follow up: https://www.livescience.com/47... Life Science article on current mass extinction event.

      --
      -- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
    4. Re:Current extinction event.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      You know that Barr is no longer pretending his letter last week was a summary, right? https://www.washingtonpost.com... He's all but retracted it, but sure, the Mueller report totally cleared his boss, right?

      Would this be the same fake-news Washington Post that assured us for over two fucking years that Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary!?

      Go on, keep up that ResistWeMuch! and hand Trump the 2020 election too. I'm enjoying you nutjobs going full Thelma & Louise into the Grand Canyon.

    5. Re:Current extinction event.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would this be the same fake-news Washington Post that assured us for over two fucking years that Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary!?

      No, I'm not familiar with that one. This is the famous Washington Post, the one based in Washington DC. It has never assured anyone that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election, merely reported a lot of facts that pointed at that.

      In any case, what does that have to do with anything? Barr is no longer claiming his report is a valid summary of the Mueller investigation. That's a fact, no matter who reports it.

    6. Re:Current extinction event.. by epine · · Score: 1

      Would this be the same fake-news Washington Post that assured us for over two fucking years that Trump had colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election from Hillary!?

      Since "collusion" doesn't have a formal definition under the law (despite Trump's incessant tweeting of the word as if this was the precise legal matter at hand), the Washington Post pretty much had an open field to use the word however they wished to use it, over a wide spectrum of possible meanings, only a few of which encompass dire legal jeopardy, which Trump has now escaped, relatively unscathed (details still to follow), from this one particular investigation.

      Rep. Schiff: You Might Say That's Okay.

      I think it's immoral. I think it's unethical. I think it's unpatriotic. And, yes, I think it's corrupt—and evidence of collusion. Now I have always said that the question of whether this amounts to proof of conspiracy was another matter ...

      You're entirely sure that nothing in there would have amounted to "collusion" in the minds of the WP editorial staff, as the WP elected to use that word, in that context, at that time?

      Because I'm not.

    7. Re: Current extinction event.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're a real special kind of stupid

    8. Re:Current extinction event.. by Kyr+Arvin · · Score: 1

      white people are adverse to breeding in a political climate that is hostile towards them.

      Boy, you really don't understand how biology, reproduction, and humanity in general works.

  4. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Hey dumdum. That whole area was a shallow sea at that point.

  5. If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Just finding amber-preserved tektites is a huge deal (meaning their chemical signature would be basically the same as it was during the event -- something never before encountered). If there actually are non-reworked dinosaur bones in close proximity to / at the K-T boundary, it would unequivocally prove that the dinosaurs survived all the way up to the asteroid impact, which has been the subject of some debate. DePalma is taking a lot of flak for doing some Barnum-type hyping of the find, and for maintaining extreme secrecy about the location of the site -- as well as for letting journalists release some details that are apparently not included in the peer-reviewed paper (e.g., the existence of said dino bones). But if even part of what is says he has found is true, then it is a truly historic find which will represent a quantum leap in our understanding of the bolide impact at the end of the Cretaceous Period, and even shed a lot of light for what to expect about similar impacts in the future. Personally, I think that (in addition to his showmanship and relative lack of transparency so far) a lot of the blowback is coming from folks at bigger institutions who are a bit miffed that this find was produced not by their ranks but by a younger, non-Ph.D. paleontologist playing somewhat by his own rules. But big scientific claims require lots of scrutiny, and eventually proof. Let's hope now that the word is out, he eventually puts it all out there for the scientific community to assess.

    1. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I assume you mean "unequivocally prove that the non-avian dinosaurs alive in the late cretaceous survived all the way up to the asteroid impact". Nobody is disputing the fact that at least some clades were alive then - particularly given that one clade is still alive today.

    2. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 1

      Correct -- I'm not talking about birds, and their existence across the K-T boundary thru today is quite easy to prove.

    3. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by squiggleslash · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The people who are questioning the impact theory, to the best of my knowledge, are not claiming dinosaurs were already extinct by the time the asteroid hit. Rather they're saying it came at a bad time during an already in progress mass extinction, caused by volcanic activity. Gerta Keller, for example, says "I'm sure the day after, they had a headache," but adds "we vastly overestimate the damage to the environment and to life that this Chicxulub impact had".

      (Note this is an old quote and she may have updated her views since given relatively recent research into the size and power of the asteroid. I do know though that she and others believe that the formation of the Decca Traps, which changed the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years, was the primary culprit.)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      There is a recent paper with some evidence showing the Chicxulub impact caused the lava outflow from the Deccan Traps to increase. So without the asteroid strike it's possible that many of the species that went extinct could have survived the less severe volcanic activity.

      “Now that we have dated Deccan Traps lava flows in more and different locations, we see that the transition seems to be the same everywhere. I would say, with pretty high confidence, that the eruptions occurred within 50,000 years, and maybe 30,000 years, of the impact, which means they were synchronous within the margin of error,” said Paul Renne, a professor-in-residence of earth and planetary science at UC Berkeley, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center and senior author of the study, which will appear online Feb. 21. “That is an important validation of the hypothesis that the impact renewed lava flows.”

      The new dates also confirm earlier estimates that the lava flows continued for about a million years, but contain a surprise: three-quarters of the lava erupted after the impact. Previous studies suggested that about 80 percent of the lava erupted before the impact...

      Now, with three times more rock samples from areas covering more of the Deccan Traps, the researchers have established that the time of peak eruptions was the same across much of the Indian continent. This supports the group’s hypothesis that the asteroid impact triggered super-earthquakes that caused a strong burst of volcanism in India, which is almost directly opposite the impact site, the Chicxulub crater in the Caribbean Sea.

    5. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      Actually, the paper shows approximate contemporanity. It is only weak evidence for Chixulub causing a change in the rate of eruption in the Deccan Traps.

      Just like with Wegener and his plate tectonics (specifically, his proposed propulsion mechanism, the "Polar Flight"), the proposed mechanism for a triggering is deeply unconvincing. If such small deliveries of seismic energy could trigger a significant change in a volcanic region's plumbing, then we'd have known for millennia that volcanic eruptions are strongly correlated with the phase of the Moon, when in reality if there is any such correlation it is so weak that people are still arguing about it's validity. That doesn't support the crust being weak enough that seismic waves from an impact on the other side of the planet could substantially re-plumb a thousand-km long volcanic district.

      That Wegener's theory of plate tectonics proved to be correct after another half-century of work and a complete replacement of the "Polar Flight" mechanism with mantle convection does nothing to make the "Polar Flight" mechanism more convincing.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
    6. Re:If legit, it is the paleo find of the century by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Assuming the paper's argument is the case, does this mean the Decca Traps related extinctions wouldn't have happened, or would simply have occurred over a longer period of time? The other issue I have with this argument is that it makes it doesn't address the evidence extinctions were already happening pre-Chicxulub. That's actually the reason the Traps theory is still a thing, to explain why they were on-going at the time. So if the paper is right (and we don't see evidence that actually Dinos were doing find pre-Chicxulub, which is entirely possible I guess), then one of the following is also true:

      1. There was a third catastrophic event occurring that hasn't been discussed.
      2. It doesn't matter if most of the Decca Traps related atmospheric change occurred after Chicxulub, what happened before was enough.

      I should point out I'm not married to either theory, I have a little bit of a distrust of the asteroid theory because it's a little too convenient (biggest roawwwwyist monsters ever destroyed by biggest fucking asteroid ever! - yeah, can't see why the same people that got into paleontology over the former would love the latter theory) and am inclined to think that the fact only four or so species of dinosaurs apparently survived, all birds, points at more than a big explosion. Chicxulub seems to be the biggest factor, but I don't automatically buy the idea that mammals, not dinosaurs, dominate the Earth today solely because of it, especially if we have compelling evidence of other major catastrophes occurring at the time.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  6. It was the day the dinosaurs became tar sands. by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    A planet of mammals? No, a planet of the Lizard People!

    Be sure to vote for the right one next year.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  7. Re: What? by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 5, Informative

    Let's head this off . . . read the article. The event was not caused by the mega-tsunamis from the impact itself (which would have taken hours to arrive at the site from the proto-Gulf of Mexico) but by "seiche," which are localized earthquakes caused by the impact which arrived at the site of the find within minutes. This is why the tektites were inhaled by the still-living fish and also found impacted at the site -- the tektites were still raining down when this happened.

  8. Not just anyone. The biggest ever! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is actually not just any mass-extinction, but by now aleready the biggest that ever happened.
    Not counting the inevitable result of the event's inertia, even if we stop and turn around right now.

  9. Actually, it's even bigger. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you look at the number species that died out, we already surpassed the one back then. An I me "we" as in: We humans managed to do that.

    Although, to be fair, the only reason we're not number 2, is that as far as we know, there simply weren't so many species back then, when the trees literally flipped earth's atmosphere, and then proceeded to stack up since there was nothing alive that could digest the wood.

    Hope's still not out though. I know enough organizations and people who might proudly still get us there.

    1. Re:Actually, it's even bigger. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How do we know that there weren't so many species back then? It's likely that most of the species from back then are not represented in the known fossil record, and that we lack the ability to distinguish between many of the species (look at the current number of previously defined species that have been divided up into multiple species based on characteristics that would not have survived being fossilized. While not trying to minimize the current rate of extinctions, I don't think that there is any comparison with what happened 66 million years ago.

    2. Re:Actually, it's even bigger. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you look at the number species that died out, we already surpassed the one back then.....

      The cluelessness is strong in this one.

      We're probably an order of magnitude or two short of the extinctions of the KT impact, and three or four orders of magnitude short of the Permian mass extinction.

      No matter how bad you think humans may be, Mother Nature puts us to shame.

    3. Re: Actually, it's even bigger. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you look at the number species that died out, we already surpassed the one back then.

      That's a meaningless number, percentage is more appropriate, and the percentage of species actually going extinct over the last 200 years is insignificant in comparison.

    4. Re: Actually, it's even bigger. by tigersha · · Score: 1
      --
      The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
  10. A quantum leap is actually ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ... the smallest physically possible leap. ;)

    (I get you, of course. I just wish there was a better way of saying it.)

    1. Re:A quantum leap is actually ... by mark-t · · Score: 1

      It may be the smallest, as you say, but it is noteworthy that a quantum leap also represents being in an entirely new state where aspects of the previous state are not necessarily applicable.

    2. Re:A quantum leap is actually ... by Livius · · Score: 1

      A quantum leap is a leap that cannot be made incrementally.

    3. Re:A quantum leap is actually ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Continuously. QL's are incremental by design.

    4. Re:A quantum leap is actually ... by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      an entirely new state where aspects of the previous state are not necessarily applicable.

      So, almost completely the wrong simile then.

      Say the universe has three fossil sites, A, B, and C, each with well-recorded context (associated fossils, well-understood sedimentary and taphnonomic contexts), solid dating. You add a 4th site - this one - with some genuine questions over the details of sedimentology, taphonomy. Does this constitute a "quantum leap"? The existence of the 4th site in no way invalidates the existence of the first 3.

      Sithrak, I hate that phrase. There is a spit for people who use it.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  11. Dominionists and fundamentalists will deny it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Despite any amount of scientific evidence presented and vetted, even if it's by the entire scientific community, the Fundamentalist Christians, Dominionists, and other religious types will claim it's all faked, that science is evil, they're all trying to sway the faithful from God to Satan, and so on, and so forth.
    This is the era we're living in right now: The Age of Anti-Information. The stupid people are getting stupider, and when you challenge their non-truths and delusions, they get violent, vote for people like Trump, and generally start fucking up everything they can get their hands on. They have to be stopped before they do any more damage. Real Truth, Real Facts, that's the future mankind should have. Their way is like the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs.

  12. Re: The day it died by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Because they found timed slates in the same spot. Samples such as B.Rubblicus and F.Flinstonious clocked in, but they never clocked out.

  13. They aren't. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is not exactly particle physics. :)

    (Hello dear Mathematicians! Yes, you can call us, when you solved the GÃdel incompleteness theorem problem and put your base axioms on a basis of observed reality. Until then, please stay with philosophy and religion over there in the corner, next to the bowl of nuts.)

  14. link doesn't allow ad blockers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    regards

    1. Re: link doesn't allow ad blockers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good. Pay for a subscription or pay by watching ads, freeloader.

    2. Re: link doesn't allow ad blockers by Wonda · · Score: 1

      Have the ad servers stopped serving malware yet?

    3. Re: link doesn't allow ad blockers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not a corporate boot-licker like you so fuck off.

  15. Non-Avian Dinosaurs by BrianMarshall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We still have avian dinosaurs - I have one trying to take apart the thermostat on the wall as I write this. Some of them are pretty smart.

    --
    "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
    1. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Rei · · Score: 1
      --
      "We have a âno acronym policyâ(TM), or NAP.â -- SpaceX Orientation Video
    2. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Rei · · Score: 5, Funny

      I like to picture dinosaurs with the behaviors of modern birds, because it can sometimes be really disturbing. For example, when my amazon gets hormonal, he crouches down, flares all his feathers out, and pulsates his pupils - black-in-yellow, doubling then halving in size every few seconds while he locks his gaze on you... then just randomly, clamps onto the nearest object, no matter what it is, even a piece of steel, and just gnaws down on it again and again, as hard as he can - all the while never breaking his gaze on you. As if you say, "YOU SEE THIS, BUDDY? THIS COULD BE YOU!!!!"

      Now, it's one thing when the animal doing that threat display is a 400 gram fluffball. But picture a Tyrannosaur doing that. Staring you down with pulsating yellow eyes and randomly clamping onto a tree as a threat display.

      --
      "We have a âno acronym policyâ(TM), or NAP.â -- SpaceX Orientation Video
    3. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by BrianMarshall · · Score: 1

      Yeah... I love the Amazon personality. I had a small one - a white-fronted - for 18 years.

      Now, I have a green-cheeked conure. Surprisingly, he is an better talker and, like an Amazon, so inteligent it's scary. One evening when he was a few months old, he realized that "I" and "me" mean the same thing, and he just thought this was wonderful. He was going, "I am me! I am parrot, me! I me me!".

      --
      "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro" -- HST
    4. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably the one that transmitted the frog-killing fungus.

    5. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Rei · · Score: 2

      When my amazon was just a couple months old (4 months I think?), I was trying to get him to stand on this slidey wood ladder thing I had gotten him but which he didn't like. So I hung it from a rope, and then further up the support rope I tied a string (too thin for him to stand on) and hung a treat down, so he'd have to stand on the ladder to reach the treat. I kept coming back though and the treat would be gone, its string up on the support rope. I had thought that my then-spouse was doing it, so I'd reset it with a new treat, and the exact same thing would happen again - I'd come back, treat gone, and string up at the support rope.

      Eventually I caught him in the act. He'd climb up to the support rope, climb across it (bypassing the ladder that he hated), get to the string, and then bit by bit, , reel it in to pull up the treat to where he could reach it. And it wasn't easy to reel in, either, as it wanted to slip back down - he had to restrain it each time he pulled it up.

      I mean... try to picture a 4-month-old human figuring that one out.

      He used to take backs off my earrings while I was wearing them, and would take apart clothespins and refrigerator clips faster than I could put them back together (which ultimately led to me stopping giving them to him, as it was more of a waste of my time than his ;) Just super-smart.

      --
      "We have a âno acronym policyâ(TM), or NAP.â -- SpaceX Orientation Video
    6. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by doug141 · · Score: 4, Funny

      He wants you to get a NEST?

    7. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Rei · · Score: 1

      Come on, people, this post deserves mod points ;)

      --
      "We have a âno acronym policyâ(TM), or NAP.â -- SpaceX Orientation Video
    8. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Get a proper heating engineer and not and illegal immigrant.

    9. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      My in-laws have a cockatoo. (They used to own two but one passed away about 15 years ago.) She can be a really sweet bird and love to be petted... until she doesn't. At that point, you'd best take your fingers away from her or you'll wind up missing one. She can crack whole walnuts in one bite and has picked master locks.

      Now, size that up to T-Rex size and add razor sharp teeth. You'd have a highly intelligent dinosaur who's really agitated, sees you as a tasty snack, and who can shred anything you put up to shield yourself from those the teeth.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    10. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thanks. Reading this thread was getting me triggered. When I finally escaped from living with parrots, it took over two years to stop finding bird poop.

    11. Re:Non-Avian Dinosaurs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Haha. I just have cats, myself, but same deal more or less. Minus the shrieking.

  16. What day of the week was the impact? by BobK65 · · Score: 1

    Could it have been the original Ash Wednesday?

    1. Re:What day of the week was the impact? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember, the dinosaurs never existed, They fossils were put there by Satan to fool us all and make us believe the earth is old. It's really only 6000 years old and Noah just sailed a few weeks ago.

    2. Re:What day of the week was the impact? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      "Hot Fudge Sundae - which happens on a Tuesday this year," to quote an SF novel about asteroid impact.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  17. You're not up on the latest numbers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Depending on how you count, we're at 60-90% of all species and growing, currently.

    1. Re:You're not up on the latest numbers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, no we are not unless you are being completely pedantic.

    2. Re:You're not up on the latest numbers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Depending on how you count, we're at 60-90% of all species and growing, currently.

      In the Permian extinction, something like 85% of all genera went extinct, and probably 98-99% of all species.

      The KT? About 50% of all genera, and 75% of all species.

      I've seen estimates of current levels of extinction that they MIGHT reach 50% of all species in a hundred years or so. Maybe. But how much of that is because the Earth is coming out of an ice age?

      So no, Mother Nature is still kicking little human ass. In a billion years, there will be no evidence we ever existed.

    3. Re:You're not up on the latest numbers. by uncqual · · Score: 1

      There will probably still be some human fossils around and archeological digs being done. This digs will presumably done by highly intelligent and evolved cockroaches who will be able to ascertain that there were once human made structures in some areas. Our landfills will be an interesting find to keep them busy also -- if they can resist the temptation to eat scraps they find.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  18. How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by eminencja · · Score: 1

    "The asteroid was 12 kilometers"

    How big was it when it entered the atmosphere? How quickly would it burn? How big was the atmosphere back then?

    1. Re:How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it stayed in one piece, then the size between when it entered the atmosphere and when it hit would be more or less inconsequential, as only a trivial amount of material in comparison to its enormous total mass would ablate from its surface due to friction with the atmosphere.

    2. Re:How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      How big was it when it entered the atmosphere?

      12km. The guesstimate isn't based on its size out in space, since we have no way to even imagine getting a clue about that.

      How quickly would it burn?

      Escape speed is 11km/s. Which is the MINIMUM speed it could have been moving relative to the ground. Assuming it was not in a retrograde orbit, and that it was coming from the vicinity of the Asteroid Belt (more likely it came from farther out, possibly even interstellar), we're talking closer to Solar Escape Speed, so in the time zone of 40-50km/s.

      How big was the atmosphere back then?

      Based on the birds and pterosaur wings, pretty much the same as now. Which means a two to three second transit from the edge of atmosphere to the ground.

      Remember that for a sufficiently large object (and the dinokiller fit that definition of "sufficiently large"), the atmosphere doesn't matter at all, except to give you a really spectacular lightshow during the last few minutes of your existance....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    3. Re:How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Look at it like this. The atmosphere is generally considered to be about 100 km deep. This asteroid's body is about 1/10 of that in round numbers. The atmosphere wouldn't have changed much (depth-wise) between then and now.

      Space impacts for a rock this big, the atmosphere doesn't present much of a barrier to them. Even an impact over deep ocean, the ocean isn't much of a barrier either. They are going to impact the Earth's crust almost entirely intact, even if they get toasty around the edges.

      So questions like "How quickly would it burn", the answers don't mean much. The asteroid is through the atmosphere so fast, and the body of the asteroid is intact, it's a fraction of a second to a small handful of seconds (it depends upon the angle of approach).

    4. Re:How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by Jason+Levine · · Score: 1

      Also:

      Earth's atmosphere is about 300 miles (480 kilometers) thick, but most of it is within 10 miles (16 km) the surface.

      So, if the asteroid was 12km large, then the outer edge of the asteroid was likely in the thinner parts of the atmosphere when the inner edge impacted.

      --
      My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
    5. Re:How quickly did it burn in the atmosphere? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      except to give you a really spectacular lightshow during the last few minutes of your existance....

      seconds. Small number of seconds.

      Oh, OK, you could allow a three minutes for the shock wave to arrive. But much longer than that and the light show happens well below your local horizon.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  19. The proof of alternative theories by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    have always been much less than the proof for new theories. Just tried and gather the proof that environmental changes kill the dinosaurs and see what you find.

  20. men will faint at what is coming upon the Earth by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.

    Mystery Red of the Great American Eclipse
    It has blood on it!
    ABCNews: Eclipse makes pendulum wander
    Sound of Silence
    Sun researchers find strange eclipse reading

  21. Re:Scientists lie all the time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's no evidence any religious person knows what time is.

  22. Catholic priest proposed "Big Bang theory" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There's no evidence any religious person knows what time is.

    "Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, Royal Astronomical Society Associate[1] (French: [ lm:t] (About this soundlisten); 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, mathematician, astronomer, and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Louvain.[2] He was the first to identify that the recession of nearby galaxies can be explained by a theory of an expanding universe,[3] which was observationally confirmed soon afterwards by Edwin Hubble.[4][5] He was the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law, or the Hubble-Lemaître law,[6][7] and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.[8][9][10][11] Lemaître also proposed what became known as the "Big Bang theory" of the creation of the universe, originally calling it the "hypothesis of the primeval atom".[12]"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître

  23. Sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pretty pathetic, how you value right wing fake news organizations over real ones. You know, like the Washington Post. While the WaPo might get the odd story wrong, they correct the inaccuracies.

    Meanwhile Fox just endlessly doubles down on the lies like their orange God does.

    Sad too, that you keep defending your orange God. Could it be that you are in the thrall of a false prophet? Nah!

    1. Re:Sad by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Russian communists were never naive and foolish enough to believe Pravda.

      You American communists could learn something from your Russian counterparts.

  24. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, fake news all around then, eh? "Science", wild speculation freely intermixed with bullshit.

    Athiesm, the biggest lie.

  25. Surely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Surely, a major contributing factor to to the extinction of Dinosaurs is a gravitational event, gravity increased, possibly over time. This increase in gravity means that the larger lifeforms can no longer sustain their own weight and die off. The smaller lifeforms continue to exist and evolve.

    Was the gravitation event caused by an impact? maybe a collision with a large object would most certainly alter our trajectory and spin.

    1. Re:Surely by ChrisMaple · · Score: 1

      An impact big enough to significantly change gravity would cause destruction far beyond the capability of macroscopic life to survive. Consider the Earth as an uncooked egg, and drop it onto concrete. That kind of damage.

      --
      Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
  26. I think there was a song by Topwiz · · Score: 1

    I can't remember if I cried
    When I read about his widowed bride
    Something touched me deep inside
    The day the dinosaurs died

    1. Re:I think there was a song by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      They haven't died yet. In fact, there are more species of dinosaurs alive today than there are mammals, though we're killing both off pretty fast. Eventually, the number of species of dinosaurs and mammals is likely to remain the same - Homo sapiens and Gallus gallus.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  27. WRONG. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was there that day. It was a nice day and the last dinosaur happened to step into my pit that I made. It was a good fall. Very tasty.
    Oh wait,mankind wasn't around back then. Well, no problem for this generation as all they do is make outrageous claims.

  28. Rise of the birds by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It did not become a planet of mammals. For the next 10 million years, it became the planet of very large birds. Eventually, the mammals grew in size, and began to displace most of the large birds.

  29. Palm Beach Museum of Natural History by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wow, I've lived most of my life only a few miles from Wellington, FL and I never heard of the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History. I'll have to check it out!

  30. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Athiesm, the biggest lie.

    God damn! Thank you for noticing. I thought I was the only one that realized atheists were in fact merely really arrogant agnostics.

  31. Re: What? by Charstor · · Score: 1

    I'm pretty sure the event that wiped out the dinosaurs had nothing to do with asteroids and tsunamis. It was a dinosaur version of Control, but they did not have a Christopher Pike or Burnham to eliminate the threat.

    --
    Lottie Dottie...I do like to party....
  32. USA Today? by SNRatio · · Score: 1

    Of all the news outlets that covered this story this weekend ... USA Today? Really? https://www.newyorker.com/maga...

    1. Re:USA Today? by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

      The NYT broke embargo on the story. They don't deserve the clicks.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  33. I Never Understood This by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I mean, "we vastly overestimate the damage..." kind of comments.

    The asteroid effectively ended the reign of the dinosaurs, worldwide. Yeah they were in decline already, but who cares? Would you have wanted to be around when a 12 km asteroid hits? We got all excited when an asteroid a few tens of metres entered the atmosphere over Russia.

    Such comments seem to be designed to say, "hey, birds survived. Crocodilians survived. Mammals survived." OK, but is just "surviving" what you want out of life? Hard-core Darwinists would say that's enough but not me. I'll take living without surviving a 12 km asteroid hit if you don't mind. I don't need to eat carrion, rotten vegetables and drink dirty water for a year just to make it through.

    As Phil Plait said, "it was a really bad day".

    1. Re:I Never Understood This by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      The asteroid effectively ended the reign of the dinosaurs, worldwide.

      She is one of a group of paleontologists who disputes that, that's the entire point she's trying to make. The view point you're expressing is exactly what she's criticizing.

      Whether she's right or wrong... I don't know enough to tell. I do however question your certainty that dinosaurs wouldn't have been dominating the Earth after K-T if they weren't already in decline before the asteroid impact. The extinctions caused by the Deccan Traps may very well have lead to species disappearing that might have survived the impact, and might have dominated afterwards.

      In that respect, she's 100% right.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
  34. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Agnostics are just atheists with a terrible understanding of evolution and cosmology.

  35. t-shirt by sad_ · · Score: 1

    check out tfa, if only for one picture;
    you'll see DePalma's assistant wearing a Jurasic Park t-shirt, how cool is that :)

    --
    On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
  36. Re:Okay. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    April 1st

  37. Re: Which star will present this finding? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Babestation - Anybody with big fake tits.

  38. Re: What? by greythax · · Score: 1

    Agnostics are just Atheists in training.

  39. Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Day the Dinosaurs Died -- is that like The Day Time Ended?

  40. AMAZING ðY'ðY' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think its amazing how they found it because itâ(TM)s been there for so many years well done but sad about the Astroid ðY'-ðY'-ðY®ðY®ðYOEðYOE

  41. scientific illiteracy by mjmcc · · Score: 1

    I wish that journalists would be expected to know at least a high-school level of science before being detailed to write about scientific discoveries. The K-T boundary does not mark "the end of the Cretacious Era", because there is no such thing. The K-T boundary marks the end of the Cretaceous Period, and also the end of the Mesozoic Era.

    1. Re:scientific illiteracy by RockDoctor · · Score: 1
      If you're going to get picky, then the reason that geologists have for some years been moving to describing it as the K-Pg boundary (if they abbreviate it at all) is that the Cretaceous and Palaeogene are the same level of the taxonomy of time units. Or you could talk equivalently about the M-C (Mesozoic-Caenozoic) boundary.

      It didn't make much difference in my geological back yard, not compared to the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum.

      --
      Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  42. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whille i have to agree there are a number of shouty arrogant atheists. I myself am an atheist an im not sure why i should automatically be considered arrogant.

  43. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simple. Athiests can not exist. For the same reason you do not know what caused, for example. the Big Bang. You do not know that God, the god himself, caused it, and all you can know is that you don't know. You are an arrogant agnostic, precisely because you cannot possibly know, no one can, yet you claim to know. No one knows God exists, and no one knows God does not exist. No one knows, they only believe. An athiest, by definition, knows God does not exist, but this is false knowledge without any evidence whatsoever, therefore, all you know for certain is that you don't actually know. That's agnosticism. You've been living a lie.

  44. Re: What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Athiests that believe the Big Bang occurred make the same unprovable assumption that believers do. You can't possibly know what caused the Big Bang. You can not possibly know if God exists, and you cannot possibly know that God does not exist. These are the facts, thus, athiests, and athiesm, can not exist. Because you can't possibly know whether God exists, you're just another arrogant agnostic claiming something that can not be known.