New Extinction Theories, The Meteor Impact
For more details on this topic, see Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.Traditionally paleontology had followed geology in preferring uniformitarian mechanisms, despite the promotion by Eugene Merle Shoemaker of the importance of catastrophic impacts.
During the renaissance period Walter Alvarez and others found iridium in the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary layer. Also the Chicxulub Crater, was identified and determined to be due to a meteor impact. These discoveries led to the acceptance and popularisation of the idea that the extinction had been caused by a meteor impact.
This in turn undermined the assumption that dinosaurs had become extinct because they were inferior to mammals. Instead it suggested they had fallen prey to a random event which no large animal could have survived.
Read more about this topic: Dinosaur Renaissance
Famous quotes containing the words extinction, meteor and/or impact:
“I wish all men to be free. I wish the material prosperity of the already free which I feel sure the extinction of slavery would bring.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid-air stands still.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Television does not dominate or insist, as movies do. It is not sensational, but taken for granted. Insistence would destroy it, for its message is so dire that it relies on being the background drone that counters silence. For most of us, it is something turned on and off as we would the light. It is a service, not a luxury or a thing of choice.”
—David Thomson, U.S. film historian. America in the Dark: The Impact of Hollywood Films on American Culture, ch. 8, William Morrow (1977)