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Dinosaur-killing Asteroid Mark on North Dakota


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Very cool article on a Hell Creek Fm bonebed in Bowman, North Dakota

 

A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth’s last mass extinction event. The death scene from within an hour of the impact has been excavated at an unprecedented fossil site in North Dakota. (Graphics and photos courtesy of Robert DePalma)

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https://news.berkeley.edu/2019/03/29/66-million-year-old-deathbed-linked-to-dinosaur-killing-meteor/

 

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It's interesting that the Berkeley article mentions a triceratops and then a triceratops and hadrosaur found in the flood, the Gizmodo report doesn't seem to mention dinosaurs and the BBC specifically has David Burnham saying regarding the finds "They're not dinosaurs, but I think those will eventually be found too.".  

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The New Yorker article that non-remanie posted is one of the more interesting articles I’ve read. I hope it’s all true. They mention that this site would solve the 3 meter problem where before this discovery, dinosaur fossils have not been found in the last 3 meters of the Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation. What they didn’t mention is ammonites have not been found previously at the K/T boundary leading some to claim they went extinct shortly before the event. Here he has an ammonite at the event. Also fascinating is tektites in amber found at the site.

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Eric, I read the same article yesterday morning.  It's a riveting piece....  I also hope the data and fossils are as portrayed.  It would be an incredibly unique discovery.

The human mind has the ability to believe anything is true.  -  JJ

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The dig-site is astonishing in the clues it contains and the questions it raises.
Problems with the timing of the 'tsunami' surge and the rain of tektites are not so easily explained as suggested in the article. Theorizing that it was actually the shaking from the impact that created the turbulent deposits ignores the existence of marine organisms in the otherwise fresh water deposit. This scenario pretty much requires an impact tsunami. I have to wonder whether the tektites might not have had a much longer 'hang-time' than that calculated.

 

Much of the academic establishment shrink in horror from DePalma's Popeil Pocket Fisherman promotional style, but I think he is on to something amazing.

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"There has been an alarming increase in the number of things I know nothing about." - Ashleigh Ellwood Brilliant

“Try to learn something about everything and everything about something.” - Thomas Henry Huxley

>Paleontology is an evolving science.

>May your wonders never cease!

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That New Yorker article is fascinating and raises so many questions.

I can't wait to read the full paper! 

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Wow. I hope that he gets a PhD for this. 

 

I like this quote about a mammal found in a burrow that was dug through the K/T boundary. How many fossils do we know of were from an organism that was born and died in different eras? 

 

“It may have been born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleocene,” he said. “And to think—sixty-­six million years later, a stinky monkey is digging it up, trying to figure out what happened.”

My goal is to leave no stone or fossil unturned.   

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Pretty amazing stuff. I can't find the actual research article though? It says it was published in PNAS on Friday but a search on their own website turned up nothing. 

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As others said, we should have skepticism of the site and claims. Please note my comments are not about disparaging DePalma, I have nothing against him. The problem is what he claims is extraordinary and seems dramatized. All extracted conclusions should always be based on and supported by data. He has so far not published or presented anything but one burrow. Obviously, this will change shortly but my understanding is that the upcoming paper only really covers the Triceratops ilium. Another problem is that he has heavily restricted access to the site, science requires repeatability. In paleontology, repeatability comes from two different scientists being able to examine the same fossil or site and then compare their findings. A few good examples of data that can be independently repeated would be length measurements of a bone, grain sizes in a rock, or geologic formation the specimen was found in. As of right now, DePalma has not made the vast majority of his data available or repeatable.
 

Then there is the Dakotaraptor turtle bone misidentification, it may seem minor and in a way it is, BUT paleontologist are trained for years on proper bone ID and so it raises doubt on his abilities. The incorrect ID also shows he did not have enough other people check his work, which is worrisome to many in the field. People, of course, make mistakes however a major point of colleagues and peers is to help catch those mistakes before they are published. I hope he has learned from his error and again have nothing against him personally, I would love for everything he says about the site to be true. The problem is some things he said in the past, for example the ID of a turtle bone, have not been correct.

Edited by CBchiefski
Clarity
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They found a Pleistocene wombat skeleton in the bones of a Cretaceous dinosaur here. Is it possible the burrow was made well after (like in this case I mention of around 100 million years later..)?

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"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe" - Saint Augustine

"Those who can not see past their own nose deserve our pity more than anything else."

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9 hours ago, Ash said:

They found a Pleistocene wombat skeleton in the bones of a Cretaceous dinosaur here. Is it possible the burrow was made well after (like in this case I mention of around 100 million years later..)?

 

On ‎31‎.‎03‎.‎2019 at 3:41 AM, Paleoworld-101 said:

Pretty amazing stuff. I can't find the actual research article though? It says it was published in PNAS on Friday but a search on their own website turned up nothing. 

Probably a joke related to the 1st of April today ?

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paper

A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116

 

 

5ca26b9c4ba91_F1.medium(1).gif.8e69329e79bf012573e9fd50671837fe.gif

 

Robert A. DePalma, Jan Smit, David A. Burnham, Klaudia Kuiper, Phillip L. Manning, Anton Oleinik, Peter Larson, Florentin J. Maurrasse, Johan Vellekoop, Mark A. Richards, Loren Gurche, and Walter Alvarez
PNAS published ahead of print April 1, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1817407116
 
 
 
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8 hours ago, Scylla said:

I had a feeling it was too good to be true! April fools day release?

 

 

Is it or not?

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe" - Saint Augustine

"Those who can not see past their own nose deserve our pity more than anything else."

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I have read the paper itself (superficially) and nothing else. I don´t know much about the KPg-boundary.

- The paper seems to document the site quite well; it contains data of many fields of geology.

- There are really no spectacular claims. Nothing really unexpected was discovered in detail - except that such a site itself was discovered. In other words, its mainstream science.

- Very probably, not everything is correct, what the authors discuss and conclude. But that doesn´t matter. They have documented a very special site, rich in fossils, containing spherules etc.  (even enclosed in amber) and capped by the KPg boundary Ir-rich layer.

- Interpretations may change in the future, but that´s science.

- If there is a dino there or not, it really doesn´t matter.

- Look in other regions for similar sites! Maybe there are some more! Maybe they are not easy to discover, but maybe there are some more!

- The site gives the opportunity to check hypotheses of ejecta formation, fallout etc. after a large impact against observations.

Franz Bernhard

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The date of publication being April 1st does not matter.

Will say I am rather impressed with the paper and it being heavily focused on the sedimentology is good as it sets up the framework to construct any other ideas. It is vital to first establish what occurred to potentially create such a site and after that state some of the claims put forth in the news articles. I am still skeptical of the claims but so far the process and foundation are solid.

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agreed, e.g.:

Designing global climate and atmospheric chemistry simulations for 1 and 10 km diameter asteroid impacts using the properties of ejecta
from the K-Pg impact
Owen B. Toon, Charles Bardeen, and Rolando Garcia

Atmos. Chem. Phys., 16, 13185–13212, 2016

toonchicxchixcimpacraejectmodelawesomeacp-16-13185-2016.pdf

(less than 1 Mb)

 

 

 

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