New dinosaur extinction theory causes debate

I would say 95 percent or more of the earth scientists who study the KT boundary are in agreement that Chicxulub is the event that brought on the KT mass extinctions,"

Well then.. it must be fact... LOL....

It would be fascinating to have a book of "truth" where we could compare to see how many of sciences BEST guesses were actually as far off as could be...

Re: Book of Truth: The most fascinating thing about science is that we have stopped declaring many things as facts...we refer to them as " well founded" or "widely accepted" hypotheses". We know that the general theory of evolution is such a thing. Well-founded and widely accepted, but the exact mechanisms are not completely understood. This article is a prime example of that kind of "knowlege". We know the dinos did go extinct, and we're pretty close to the actual dates, too, but the "why" remains a mystery, and probably always will. It is a painstaking, multi-generational detective story, with billions of clues to sift through. Was the Yucatan impact a reason for "punctuated evolution"? Did that impact and the impact in India cause the volcanism at the Deccan traps? Were the old North American megafauna killed off by the Yellowstone super volcano 70,000 years ago, or did humans eat them? It is such an interesting field of study. The one thing we do know for certain, no book of bull5hit written in 1000 BC or 350 AD can tell us what did happen. It all happened way before 6,000 years ago. Heck, 6000 years ago, we were just at the dawn of city-building. Humans had been around for nearly a million years already, had sophisticated agriculture, sewn and woven textile clothing, herbal medicine and musical instruments, leisure arts and religion. The Bible has lots of truth to tell, but science education is not part of that. I'll make you a deal. I'll keep the lab rats out of church, if you keep the Bibles out of my laboratory.

Journalists, and even many scientists, often get hung up on the idea that a single event had to have a single cause. Today we know that extinctions usually have multiple causes, each weakening the populations in different ways, which cumulatively make it impossible to recover.

The fact that climate was changing and volcanism was increasing at the same time as the asteroid impact, means we can never really say whether one of those causes, by itself, could have driven the extinctions. It seems most likely to have been a combination of all three.

Well we know that from 1994 July 16-22, over twenty fragments of comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the planet Jupiter. So why should a second or third or more comets broken apart by gravitational pull from Jupiter or Saturn be so impossible to imagine? While it's true that most comets approaching Jupiter get sucked in or destroyed by it's huge gravitational pull--it's also true that some escape and get slung around and some, not many, will impact the earth. It's truly it's a game of cosmic billiard balls and to assume ONLY one comet or meteor impacted earth 65 million years ago is foolish science.

KEN:

Also, by trying to mitigate global warming, that is in itself playing god. As the planetary system including the sun and 8 planets (debatable) evolves--things will change and change is normal--and not all will be beneficial to life and certainly not to humans. Keep in mind many other forms of life have GREATLY impacted the environment. Global algae blooms, impacting oxygen, plant life producing oxygen (so that we could exist), etc. So man is not alone in his alterations of his environment. And trying to alter the environment to fit THEORIES is nuts. No theory will fit the REAL data as it unfolds. It's only a theory!

I say worry more about the spread of nukes than anything else because if Pakistan/Iran stockpiles nuke and Al Queda gets control of then we have a much bigger problem! Global warming is just a minor irritation compared to that as it's spread out over hundreds of years. Nukes are instantaneous armageddon if not controlled.

Some years back I read a story about a time traveler who went back and found it was gun toting dinos that took out each other. That sounds like a good a theory too.

What amazes me.

All of the guru's keep saying that an impact crater "killed" the dinos.

Let's look at the facts.

1) KT is an iridium rich layer - symbolic of impacts and can be dated
2) Things above KT are younger, thing below are older.
2) No dino bones above or in the KT layer.
3) All bones are far below the KT.

Conclusion: something killed them off "way before" an impact event.

The book of religion says that the meek [man] shall inherit the earth.
WRONG.
The dinos were much bigger than us and snuffed out.

How about something that is small and meek like virus and bacteria.
They are far older and evolved / survived for much longer than anything.

The real question is why only dinosaurs died and no one else. People need to wake up and realizie if there is a mass extinction of many species at one time, why weren't humans included and many of the other animals also included? Only the bible provides the reliable tested answer. The flood and the Noah's ark. People wake up and believe that the universe is a MIRACLE!!! It does not need to exist. In fact nothing needs to exist logically including logic. Therefore no matter how you put it, there is a faith in a miracle of some sort.

Just think about it. If they (the scientists) didn't have these arguments, how can they justify their jobs? Might as well throw "aliens took most of the dinosaurs away so man would not be eaten" in the mix, that is my theory! LOL

First of all, I must agree with Nicole. I also am not 100% comfortable with saying that dinosaurs are extinct if it is true that birds have descended from them. They were mobil enough to be able to move to habitable areas to survive. Yes, there is no T-Rex around today, but possibly a distant relative is here.

Secondly, look at all the earlier theories that were accepted as fact until proven wrong, like the Sun revolving around the Earth. Given that this new impact theory has been presented, it is ok to be skeptical, but lets not be over hasty in throwing it out. I would think that this gives reason to explore the possibility more, accumulate the data, and then resolve the issue.

I would also like to point out that I am a believing Christian, but I also believe in science. I believe that it is possible for my God to have the ultimate say so in what happens and how things are done, but He allows us to understand the forces of science, which is has control over. I fully believe that dinosaurs existed, that the universe can be explained by science, but He is in control. I understand that you may not agree, and I have no problem with that. Someday we will probably know this answer.

We could get wiped out by either an oversize volcanic eruption (no one really understands the molten core of our earth) or by a meteor hitting the earth . Probably most of our remains will be recycled by bacteria like everything else is, but a few things might remain - like plastic water bottles. Future beings a billion years from now will probably find a case of 24 deer park bottles these encased in ice and conclude that they were linked to some sort of religious belief involving animals - not far off the mark. Do you think they will be able to find out that the Sumarians invented the bases of 12 and 60 that we use for telling time and for determining the number of bottles in cases of sodas? The alternative to complete destruction is time travel (Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, etc). Be excellent to each other! Then of course there is heaven and hell. Guess I know where I'm going when the big one strikes!

There is another theory that is unpopular. About a year ago the Discovery Channel presented a theory that large amounts of atmospheric methane gas exploded and killed the dinosaurs. Interesting, but probably not likely.

I'm no scientist by any stretch of the imagination but wouldn't logic dictate that if at the KT boundary there are no dinosaurs above the boundary that the dinosaurs were already dead when the boundary came into existence? I really think that it was a combination of events that led to the demise of the dinosaurs, excessive volcanic eruptions, disease and maybe more than one impact event we really don't know.

I don't think the system they use to suggest the age of the rocks and layers are accurate.

I don't think it's about boundaries, comets, meteors, or falling ice. I think the whole destruction of the dinosaurs was a nonconsecutive event. Over millions and millions of years certain dinosaurs came into being and became extinct in some parts of the world while later new species of dinosaurs came and went. Like the dinosaur and the human, they were never in existence at the same time so why assume that a majority of the dinosaurs were on the planet at the same time. Finally the environment became oxygenated and mammals started to become faster and more healthy and outran and outlived the dinosaurs until they ran out of steam and died off.

P.S. Carbon Dating is unquestionable science fact give or take a few million years.

Don't you find it puzzling that evolution expounds on survival of the fittest & yet the pond snail & pond turtle were around the same time as the dinosaurs & the dinosaurs were made extinct but the snail & turtle were not. What a croc!! No science here, just a philosophical view, not based on science, just based on ones philosophy. As far as man not being here the same time as the dinosaurs is a lie. There have been numerous findings of mans footprints along side & in dinosaur foot prints. Evolutionists turn their back on the empirical evidence. Too proud to say they are wrong.

One would think that even in dinosaurs were killed in one area with this alleged cosmic event there would still be others who could have survived far outside the allege impact area.