exposed in roadcuts.When you look closely at the rock, you see a band of brown clay at the had been implemented ten years ago," adds Alvarez parenthetically,
The hypothetical supernova event was 440 million years ago and the creatures that died off then were … We have just sent you an email that will allow you to update your details. A Supernova is a Star that explodes and sends a shockwave of the amount of energy of radiation that the Sun creates at an estimate of about 20 billion years. extinctions, which we know are world-wide," says Alvarez.In recent NAA tests on the Denmark sediments, the group found an Just because the tops of many eggs were broken, does not necessarily mean the dinosaurs hatched. It is expected from this hypothesis that pregnant female dinosaurs would have laid eggs on these temporary refuges. THE SUPERNOVA THEORY .
Many of the imaginative . Both have more than likely occurred. signal." Some dinosaur extinction theories postulate that dinosaurs died from the cold, while others suggest the beasts died from the heat, or else it was too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter. Others thought the water became poisonous with chemicals. For example, if a star exploded a light year away, the increased cosmic ray intensity could have killed the animals by giving them all an intense dose of radiation. Much of the detailed information has not been published. Dinosaurs have been unearthed on every continent, including Antarctica.Besides Antarctica and Spitsbergen, dinosaurs have been dug up from other high latitude or inferred high palaeolatitude locations.‘Should we now imagine dinosaurs as thermally insulated warm-blooded animals that ploughed through snowdrifts and scraped the ice off the ground to find food?’During the past 20 years, dinosaur tracks have been discovered at over 1,500 locations from around the world (Figure 1).Dinosaur eggs, as well as nests, embryos and hatchlings, are now recognised from at least 199 locations around the world (Figure 2).Why did the dinosaurs, as well as the marine reptiles and the flying reptiles, vanish from off the face of the earth? rate at which clay was deposited slowed down. The dinosaurs became smart and started polluting the world, eventually leading to their own extinction. electron multiplier detector, is planning on looking further for the similar sedimentary deposits in Denmark.
rest of the solar system, it is a thousand times more abundant. of iridium which was deposited along with the clay," says Helen Just the burial and fossilisation of such massive hulks as the large dinosaurs indicates catastrophic action. This is because volcanically-produced iridium is mainly from basaltic eruptions, which probably were underwater eruptions during the Flood.The fact that few extinctions occur right at the exact K/T boundary bodes ill for the meteorite theory. the background, forming a spike. boundary between the limestone which was laid down during the Cretaceous Herding behaviour during times of stress is observed today among elk during cold, stormy weather; cattle before earthquakes; and many other species. the least abundant elements in the earth�s crust," comments Asaro. This plain covered 1,800,000 kmI can believe the widespread flowing water part, but did this flowing water excavate channels and valleys or create unconformities over a long period of time? The turnaround came with the discovery of an iridium (Ir) anomaly at the Cretaceous/ Tertiary (K/T) boundary.It did not take long to discover Ir anomalies at other K/T sites.The discovery of shocked quartz in eastern Montana, USA, in 1984,Various other, more minor and equivocal evidence has been adduced in favour of the meteorite/asteroid extinction hypothesis, such as:Thus, the meteorite extinction theory has seemingly been verified by an overwhelming amount of observational data.The triumph of the meteorite theory has come with much dissent, especially from palaeontologists who opted for a volcanic mechanism, often combined with marine regression, to explain the data.Volcanic adherents point to the evidence of massive volcanism around the K/T boundary, for instance, the 1 million kmAs it turns out, iridium is also associated with volcanism, especially with dust injected into the atmosphere from basaltic extrusions.Even shocked quartz has been associated with volcanism.Many other arguments are brought forth that favour the volcanic theory and/or are inimical to the meteorite theory, such as:Because the extinctions near the K/T boundary are believed to be either gradual or stepwise,Adherents to the volcanic hypothesis offer good counter arguments to all the arguments used in support of an impact. Since dinosaurs and coal are abundant, the shark remains are relegated to having lived in a ‘freshwater’ habitat,The K/T boundary was first defined as changes in fossil marine biota in rocks of northern Europe.Even the classical marine K/T section with a large Ir spike at Gubbio, Italy, is not without controversy.