New Fossil Discovery Proves Dinosaurs Were Wiped Out By Asteroid

Fossil from the 'last dinosaur' proves species WAS wiped out by killer asteroid

www.dailymail.co.uk...
July 13, 2011

"A horn from one of the last surviving dinosaurs could finally prove that a massive meteor strike ended the reptiles' reign on Earth.

The 45cm-long fossilised browhorn belonged to a family of plant-eating dinosaurs that included the famous three-horned Triceratops.

It was found at a geological site known as the Hell Creek Formation in the bleak badlands of south-east Montana, U.S., where many other dinosaur fossils have been unearthed.

I have always been a fan of triceratops species...those three horned beasts had quite the horns and plate for battle! The following quote details the significance of this browhorn discovery!

"What made this find so remarkable was its location, just 13cm below the rock layer that marks the Cretaceous-Tertiary or 'K-T' boundary - the point in the fossil record where the dinosaurs died.

This suggests dinosaurs were around right up to the time all traces of their existence vanished.

Scientist believe they then disappeared suddenly after an abrupt global disaster rather than a slow extinction."

So while it is possible that dinosaurs died off from a prolonged winter, the above theory suggests that the impact killed them. Kind of like in the movie Armageddon where in the introduction an asteroid smashes into Earth and lights it up like a Chinese Lantern inside and out.


"A huge asteroid or comet smashing into the Earth off the coast of Mexico at the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago is widely believed to have killed off the dinosaurs....."

Argument against this finding is...

"There has been an apparent lack of fossils buried within the 10 feet of rock below the K-T boundary. The area has become known as the 'three-meter gap.'

The 'three-meter gap' theory has helped drive controversy over what happened to the dinosaurs, some of which evolved into birds.

Some scientists have suggested that the dinosaurs slowly died off."

Now the pro-argument...

"However, the horn fossil appears to close the gap...this discovery provides some evidence that dinosaurs didn't slowly die out before the meteor struck...the fact that this specimen was so close to the boundary indicates that at least some dinosaurs were doing fine right up until the impact.

'The in situ specimen demonstrates that a gap devoid of non-avian (bird) dinosaur fossils does not exist and is inconsistent with the hypothesis that non-avian dinosaurs were extinct prior to the K-T boundary impact event.'

The scientists pointed out that a 125cm section of rock strata laid down after the impact was completely devoid of fossils."

That is a pretty cool discovery! I know there has always been a battle between the scientists as to which theory is correct on whether or not an asteroid (and not the aftermath) is what wiped out the dinosaurs. In other words, the sediment that fell down from the impact had no fossil remains.

But for this to be a global killer, as the scientists are trying to argue, seems to be missing some facts of some sort. I still think that prolonged winter conditions and other environmental changes caused the extinction of the remaining dinosaurs. Thoughts???

It's amazing how far we've come in the last twenty years. I remember reading a dinosaur book when I was six or seven years old that said that the asteroid theory was in existence but that it was highly controversial and definitely the minority opinion.

Headline's a bit misleading (not your fault!)

This proves that some dinosaurs were around shortly before the Chicxulub impact. But it does not mean that there were not aready in serious decline. Nor, indeed, does it mean that some did not survive the impact.

I would not be all surprised if one day we find post-Chicxulub remains.

Though of course, we do not exactly have precise dating for fossils this old and at best there's an error margin of several tens of thousand years.

Very interesting. I have always liked the theory that the dinosaurs died off from a cosmic collision. But I think some of them still lived for a little while after the impact. The asteroid that hit the planet could not have been TO BIG or all bacteria on the planet would have been wiped out, the atmosphere destroyed and this would be a dead rock now.

The theory that the impact caused a kind of nuclear winter makes a lot of sense. The larger animals died off, the smaller animals took refuge in the earth, and the deep sea animals retreated deeper into the oceans.

Good find skywatcher I always loved the Triceratops as well

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I don't know much about this.
If an asteroid, large enough to cause world wide extinction, hit the earth, and they claim to know where the crater is, why haven't they found the actual asteroid?
That's the thing I've always wondered about.

Originally posted by Essan
Headline's a bit misleading (not your fault!)

This proves that some dinosaurs were around shortly before the Chicxulub impact. But it does not mean that there were not aready in serious decline. Nor, indeed, does it mean that some did not survive the impact.

I would not be all surprised if one day we find post-Chicxulub remains.

Though of course, we do not exactly have precise dating for fossils this old and at best there's an error margin of several tens of thousand years.

Yeah, after reading and posting the finding, I went of to search for more information. I came across another article that was copied and pasted sort to speak, but there was more information in that one which I will share next.

Last Known Dinosaur Before Meteor Impact Found

www.redorbit.com...
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"The finding “demonstrates that dinosaurs did not go extinct prior to the impact and that at least some dinosaurs were doing very well right up until we had the impact,” Lyson told the Guardian"

"The “three meter gap” prior to the K-T boundary is unique because dinosaur fossils never reappear in the geological record. "

"Dr. Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum said the discovery was strong evidence that dinosaurs were killed off in North America by a catastrophic event, but the evidence is not conclusive globally.

“It shows that in this part of the world dinosaurs were still viable and still roaming around at the time the meteorite hit. But what it doesn't tell us is what was going on in the rest of the world, and it could be that in other parts of the world dinosaurs were dying out at different rates and for different reasons because of other things going on at the time,” he told BBC News.

He argues that just one brow horn discovery doesn’t resolve the dispute over dinosaur extinction.

Lyson admits, though, that it is intriguing that no fossils at all were found in a 50-inch-deep layer of sediment after the catastrophic impact and calls for more work to explain the mystery.

Upon spotting the fossil, the researchers dug a trench next door to the fossil and removed rock samples from various depths. These samples were sent to Antoine Bercovici at the China University of Geosciences, who analyzed pollen grains in the rocks to identify the K-T boundary. When the asteroid hit, the existing plant life died out, and was later replaced with growth of ferns.

While the Chicxulub asteroid impact is largely uncontested, the manner in which it killed the dinosaurs is still open to debate.

“The impact may have kicked up dust and blocked out the sun and caused a nuclear winter that killed off the plant life,” said Lyson.

“Another idea is that the collision produced a thermal pulse, a microwaving effect of the entire Earth, so anything that was out on the surface, that couldn't burrow in the ground, or go underwater, was fried,” he added.
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So this article suggests that dinosaurs were killed by the blast and plant life killed by a nuclear winter due to blocked out sunlight and cold weather.

its amazing the conclusions we draw from fossils then make outlandish claims to its validity ... this is another example of scientism ....


re name your title please enough with the sensationalism


wtf is wrong ats members when does ats "evolve"

How does a meteor impact kill off a dinosaur?

I can understand if the atmosphere or the climate changed and they died but how else would they have died?

What bothers me is that most people's FACTS are just others' opinions.
Big Bang theory...
Theory of evolution....
Theory of relativity....
Dinosaur extinction theory....

.... but when you speak to most people, they believe all the above to be facts, not theories, and I'm not sure most people know the difference.

reply to post by chiefsmom

Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I don't know much about this.
If an asteroid, large enough to cause world wide extinction, hit the earth, and they claim to know where the crater is, why haven't they found the actual asteroid?

It's kind of hard to get to:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/7a1515435632.jpg[/atsimg]

A 3D map of local gravity and magnetic field variations reveals the Chicxulub crater, now buried beneath tons of sediment. This view is looking down at the surface, from an angle of about 60°.

www.daviddarling.info...

This "proves" nothing, as usual. It is evidence, that MAYBE their THEORIES MIGHT BE CORRECT. All the "scientists" just love to spout off conjecture as if it were fact, and the lumpen proletariat just go along with them.

Now, I am no believer in Creationism, however nor do I believe Evolution. Hell, even Darwin himself recanted his THEORIES when he got older.

Here they are again, spouting off about how finding a little piece of a horn at a certain level in the strata indicates proper time and everything. However, whenever they find something that DOESN'T reinforce their THEORY, it is swept under the rug. I could name hundreds of examples. You, too, can do a little google search and find tons of this stuff. No college professor will ever mention it. And of course, most of the items you will find will be on websites that take the opposite and equally stupid tack: that this PROVES their crazy Bible stories. However....

Are Present Deposition Rates the Key to the Past? The a priori assumption of many geologists is that the massive flat-lying, sheet-like, sedimentary deposits which are stacked, one upon the other, and found throughout the world took hundreds of millions of years to deposit. Such a hypothesis is known as uniformitarianism; however, it is inadequate to account for much, if not most, of the fossil-bearing strata. Some people, who pride themselves as truth-seekers, seem to think that they must, at all costs, force-fit their conclusions so that they always fall into an evolution-based / semi-uniformitarian / Old Earth philosophy. Others pretend as if they won the debate long ago with regard to how we arrived on Earth, and that it should "hereafter never... be questioned". 15

Unfortunately for the cause of science, this has resulted in an almost paranoia of writing anything that remotely resembles a catastrophic viewpoint. For to do so might subject one to ridicule, risk alienating colleagues, and perhaps endanger one's very career in the field of evolutionary thought - also often referred to as "science." In other words, an evolutionary view, no matter how unscientific it may be, is the only opinion that will be tolerated when discussing our origins. Therefore an Old Earth is absolutely essential, and those who challenge it are often labeled enemies of "science," or "religious" fanatics in an attempt to quickly dismiss the data, and the debate, no matter how valid the contrary evidences may be. For if the Time-curtain is lifted all can (and likely will) see that the evolutionary house must be torn down -- leaving the entire scientific community with nothing at all to say regarding our origins, and therefore greatly reducing their priest-like positions of societal influence

www.earthage.org...

I have poked holes in so many scientific "theories" over the years, I now am inclined to not really believe much at all. However, this is truly the scientific method. Try to DISPROVE the theories. If you keep coming up with more and more proof, the theory gets more and more solid. Shouting down any disagreement is not the scientific method.

Except for the fact that the Triceratops isn't really a species of dinosaur, remember?

Triceratops never existed

Originally posted by CaptChaos
This "proves" nothing, as usual. It is evidence, that MAYBE their THEORIES MIGHT BE CORRECT.

Which theories?

That dinosaurs died out before the Chicxulub impact?

That dinosars died out soecificaly as a result of the Chicxulub impact?

That dinosaurs survived the Chicxulub impact?

That lots of other genera of animals have existed both before and after the dinosaurs, who in the grand scheme of things are no more significant than trilobites? Or even early therapasids or cynodonts? Who were also around quite a long time.

Originally posted by chiefsmom
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, I don't know much about this.
If an asteroid, large enough to cause world wide extinction, hit the earth, and they claim to know where the crater is, why haven't they found the actual asteroid?
That's the thing I've always wondered about.

It is believed to be a comet with 11km in diameter. Upon impact, the comet vaporises itself, creating a crater around twenty times its size. In the case of the comet that killed the dinosaurs, its believed the comet caused a deep impact(like in the movie that goes by the same name). That means the comets impact managed to penetrate the crust, bringing magma to the surface.

The consequences of such an impact are too many to fit in this post and I would recommend you search the internet for that knowledge. It starts with a flash, when the comet enters the atmosphere, then tehre is the fireball, the blast after impact, that can create winds of 2200km/h in area surrounding the impact. Thre is ejecta, there is earthquake activity, instant combustion of forests, worldwide volcanism and so on and so forth. Just so you understand, the impact of the comet that killed the dinosaurs that the equivalent energy of 300.000.000 megatons. The nagasaki bomb was 20 killotons. So, no, the comet is nowhere to be seen.