New Evidence Suggests Dinosaurs Were Wiped Out by Two Meteor Strikes, Not One

Since 1980, paleontologists have suggested that a terrible meteorite impact millions of years ago radically altered the Earth's climate and killed off the dinosaur population. Now a study led by David Jolley of Aberdeen University proposes that there was a second major impact a few thousand years after the first:

In the current study, scientists examined the "pollen and spores" of fossil plants in the layers of mud that infilled the crater. They found that immediately after the impact, ferns quickly colonised the devastated landscape.

Ferns have an amazing ability to bounce back after catastrophe. Layers full of fern spores - dubbed "fern spikes" - are considered to be a good "markers" of past impact events.

However, there was an unexpected discovery in store for the scientists.

They located a second "fern spike" in a layer one metre above the first, suggesting another later impact event.

Link via reddit | Photo by Flickr user moonlightbulb used under Creative Commons license

Comments (9)

Newest 5

Newest 5 Comments

@archibot - science does tell us that things are true to high degrees of probability. In a different context you would emphasize this. Your rhetorical move (where the tentativeness of inquiry is pitched as its defining virtue) is only wheeled out when responding to lulu's good point - which is just that despite lip-service paid to this tentativeness, at any given moment the vonskippys of the world don't let the open-endedness of inquiry temper their habit of badmouthing folk who believe things which don't match the present state of inquiry. Lulu is right, vonskippies believes what they're told and then take undue intellectual credit for having done so. Their ontology is welded to research trajectories and funding councils. Their self-image as "smart" is achieved by comparing themselves to fortune tellers, flat-earthers, astrologers, creationists, Kirlian photographers and (probably) Alan Sokal's impressions of postmodernists.

That being said, the real vonskippy (not the generic vonskippy I'm talking about above) is one of the funniest and wittiest posters on Neatorama, and I'm a fan.

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@lulu- science doesn't tell anybody that anything is true. Science is just a methodology, it's a system for how to ask the questions, not a set of conclusions. The mistakes scientist have made over the years is exactly what makes science science. In fact, the more mistakes you find the more you validate the process.

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Does anyone 'get' sarcasm anymore?

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vonskippy, obviously not a religious nut!

so, you believe only what Science tells you is true? how do you get past all the mistakes scientists have made over the years?

just asking...