For years people have been telling us the dinosaurs were killed off in an extinction event 65 million years ago. That always seemed a little too even for me. Did they round off, or was there doubt, or what? Now, thanks to a really good piece of detective work reported by Paleoblog, we know it occurred 65.95 million years, give or take 40,000 years, last Thursday.
The authors of the study also date the Chixulub impact that age, reinforcing the theory that the asteroid collision killed them all off, and not volcanic eruptions or anything. Paleoblog also gives the link to the paper.
Comments
So it is really 66 million years. I wonder how long it will take the rest of us to change that in our heads.
Posted by: Matt S | April 30, 2008 9:42 AM
Oh, shoot. I forgot all about it! My tux is at the cleaners.
Posted by: NJ | April 30, 2008 10:04 AM
"reinforcing the theory that the asteroid collision killed them all off...
This possibility has always interested me. It makes me question my atheism. I can actually get down with the possibility that God, having put all His cosmic energies into this Great and Beautiful Thing, which would ultimately give rise to a magnificent celestial being endowed of His own image, ends up with nothing more than a whole lot of big and crazy lizards. I've done enough DIY to empathise with His feelings of frustration and failure, and I too have thrown something large and heavy at my creation and then stormed off in a huff.
Maybe there's something in Deism after all.
Posted by: DSKS | April 30, 2008 12:16 PM
At last, a date for the K/T event
Oh, shoot. I forgot all about it! My tux is at the cleaners.
Were you taking her to the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe? Seems appropriate.
Posted by: Eamon Knight | April 30, 2008 1:37 PM
That is such a brilliant piece of thinking, and so serendipitous a sediment.
But how many studies does it take to change a light bulb?
Posted by: Pubcat | April 30, 2008 8:25 PM
Hmmm, let's see. Wouldn't that put the event at about two days, 14 hours after the Flood? Can't wait to see the article in ARJ explaining this finding.
Posted by: catman | May 1, 2008 1:13 PM
"The ratio of argon-39 to argon-39 then provides" ... either a very clear hint of the existence of a typo, or a very good estimate of the number "1".
Posted by: efrique | May 5, 2008 2:29 AM
Not sure where that bit you quote comes from, efrique, but the paper says Ar40/Ar39 ratio in the abstract.
Posted by: John S. Wilkins | May 5, 2008 2:35 AM
Not sure where that bit you quote comes from
Really? It's smack-dab in the middle of the paleoblog piece.
The authors of the study also date the Chixulub impact that age, reinforcing the theory that the asteroid collision killed them all off, and not volcanic eruptions or anything.
I've long (ever since I read "T. Rex and the Crater of Doom", a science who-done-it that I highly recommend as an illustration of just how exciting and fun science can be) been fascinated by the wholly unwarranted resistance to the claim that the impact was the direct cause of the extinction. It's like arguing that Lincoln died, not from a bullet from JWB's gun, but from an aneurysm that just happened to burst, totally independently, milliseconds earlier. Sure it's possible, but so is YEC. Hopefully this research will put the issue to rest, but one could have hoped that of the mass of evidence already accumulated.
Posted by: ianam | May 6, 2008 4:12 PM