New "Last Dinosaur" Find Backs Asteroid Extinction

An anonymous reader writes "A new fossil discovery has suggested that dinosaurs were alive right up until the asteroid impact, and did not go extinct gradually due to climate change or changes in sea level, as previous theories have proposed."

Re:No, it doesn't

[thoromyr]

what I got from reading the article was that the author had a conclusion that wasn't supported by the evidence. Taking the finding at face value, a solitary find that is significantly closer than expected to the estimated time of impact would tend to support a gradual extinction. If the extinction were sudden, due to the asteroid impact, then a wealth of fossil data would be expected all the way up to the estimated time of impact, with very little (quickly going to none) following it. Instead there is (apparently, and this is information provided and agreed on by the article) a significant gap with -- to date -- a single fossil found in the region.

As far as I can tell it is another data point of no particular significance. To "disprove" gradual extinction before the impact a number of fossils representing normal population levels and distributions needs to be found.

Re:Nonsense!

[mswhippingboy]

You religious wingnut! Everyone knows the Middle Class went extinct because of the the Bush Tax Cuts and Big Oil!

- A Student from San Francisco

There. FTFY.

Re:Oh no

[harrytuttle777]

Typical assholes. You can't be black or gay here. You get mooded down by the hyper elit global warmining believing jerks. I go from great karma to terrible karma in 2 hours for posting a comment questioning global warming. You will probably get the same treatment by the mods for being a gay nigger. Sorry. I feel your pain.

Re:No, it doesn't

[Paltin]

But there isn't a -gap-. There is uncertainty as to the exact timing. A gap is a period when you are sure there isn't anything; uncertainty means you don't know. To the best of our knowledge - and constantly improving as more work is done - the uncertainty periods are getting smaller. This is evidence for concurrence. Concurrence is not disproven, and the evidence that supports it keeps getting better as it is refined.

There are no terrestrial beds of fossil bearing rock that also contain unequivocal markers of the K-T iridium spike. That's why we have correlation. There are lots of continuous beds of fossil bearing rock that do contain the K-T and show evidence of mass extinction - in the marine realm. Foram extinction and population is well documented and not disputed, as well as other marine creatures. The most likely explanation is that the impact had some role in the extinction.


|...as the one true theory....

The article doesn't claim anything about one true theory, and neither did I. Straw man at it's best. Scientists look for evidence and weigh it. I recommend you learn more about Bayes theorem and then reexamine the evidence.