Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
C HAPTER
10
THE DEATH OF
THE DINOSAURS
. . . the impact theory of extinction? It's codswallop.
William Clemens
I n an article written in 1990, Michael Benton of the University of
Bristol in England divided the history of dinosaur extinction studies
into three phases. 2 From the time the existence of the terrible
lizards was first acknowledged in the 1840s until around 1920, their
extinction was a "nonquestion": The great, lumbering, pea-brained
beasts had simply lost the survival race to the more nimble and
intelligent mammals—our ancestors. During the "dilettante phase"
from 1920 to 1970, interest in dinosaur extinction rose, and many
theories were proposed, some of them downright silly, as the quota-
tion from Glenn Jepsen in the Prologue makes clear. During this
phase, dinosaur extinction appears to have been treated, sometimes
by otherwise serious scientists in respectable journals, as little more
than a parlor game. Perhaps this was a defensive mechanism: Unable
to explain with any significant evidence the most notable of bio-
logic and geologic mysteries, we masked our inability by trying to
turn the whole matter into a joke.
The "professional phase" of dinosaur extinction studies began
about 1970; by 1980, when the Alvarez theory appeared, most pale-
ontologists had already made up their minds. At Snowbird I, the late
Tom Schopf, yet another fine paleontologist from the University of
Chicago, spoke for the majority: "A satisfactory explanation of the
cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs has been known for some
years. . . . Probably more than 99.99999% of all the species that
have ever existed on Earth are now extinct. . . . The dinosaurs are
among these. Extinction is the normal way of life. ... As far as is
currently known, it does not seem necessary to invoke an unusual
I 59
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