The Day The Dinosaurs Died -- September 9, 2019

The three-meter problem (dinosaurs, fossils):

• first post, March 31, 2019
• second post, April 2, 2019

So, there you have the three-meter problem.

Now, a follow-up, from The Wall Street Journal:

Drilling into the seafloor off Mexico, scientists have extracted a unique geologic record of the single worst day in the history of life on Earth, when a city-sized asteroid smashed into the planet 65 million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and three-quarters of all other life.

Their analysis of these new rock samples from the Chicxulub crater, made public Monday, reveals a parfait of debris deposited in layers almost minute-by-minute at the heart of the impact during the first day of a global catastrophe. It records traces of the explosive melting, massive earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides and wildfires as the immense asteroid blasted a hole 100 miles wide and 12 miles deep, the scientists said.

The sediments also offer chemical evidence that the cataclysm blew hundreds of billions of tons of sulfur from pulverized ocean rock into the atmosphere, triggering a global winter in which temperatures world-wide dropped by as much as 30 degrees Fahrenheit for decades, the scientists said.

Exactly what the researcher found in Bowman, ND:

Geologists study rocks as a record of compressed time, with ticks of the geologic clock typically measured in layers that accumulate over thousands of years. In the Chicxulub crater, though, hundreds of feet of sediments built up rapidly, recording impact effects like a high-speed stop-action camera, the scientists said.

“Here we have 130 meters in a single day,” said Dr. Gulick. “We can read it on the scale of minutes and hours, which is amazing.”

The asteroid blasted a cavity between 25 and 30 miles deep in the first seconds of impact, creating a boiling cauldron of molten rocks and super-heated steam, according to the scientists’ interpretation of the rock. Rebounding from the hammer blow, a plume of molten rock splashed up into a peak higher than Mount Everest.

Amazing what gets posted on the blog.

But writing a story on the the meteor that killed the dinosaurs and not mentioning Hell Creek, Montana, or North Dakota, is an incomplete story.

The $10 million project, by the way, didn't seem to tell us anything we didn't already know, at least in the big scheme of things. I'm somewhat impressed the researcher got the grant but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how he sold this project.

A $10 million well in the Gulf of Mexico? They've got 50+ rigs in the Bakken drilling $8 million wells every day and getting just as much geology out of those wells. Just saying.