Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
•
26 percent thought that no K-T impact had occurred.
• 12 percent believed that there had been no K-T mass
extinction.
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As David Raup points out, over 60 percent of the polled sci-
entists believed that an extraterrestrial impact ended the Cre-
taceous. Not bad considering the nearly 200-year influence of
uniformitarianism.
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When the Society of Vertebrate Paleontologists held its annual
meeting in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1985, the controversy was in
full bloom. According to reporter Malcolm Browne, writing in the
New York Times,
the assembled paleontologists claimed that the argu-
ment over impact had "so polarized scientific thought that publi-
cation of research reports has sometimes been blocked by personal
bias."
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(The discussion in this and the following three paragraphs is
taken from Browne's article.) One said that "Scientific careers are at
stake."
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Some linked the cosmic winter that might result from mete-
orite impact with the nuclear winter that might result from World
War III. Those who denied that cosmic winter could have occurred
might also deny nuclear winter, thus branding themselves as pro-
nuclear militarists.
Here among their own, not far from the best dinosaur collecting
fields in the world, the vertebrate paleontologists let loose. The gen-
eral thrust of the comments, though not the polite tone, was ex-
pressed by Robert Sloan of the University of Minnesota: "My own
analysis of the fossil record suggests that the Cretaceous extinctions
were gradual and that the catastrophic theory is wrong."
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William Clemens announced that he had discovered dinosaur
fossils near Prudhoe Bay in Alaska, which, as it is today, was in the
Arctic during the late Cretaceous and therefore subject to long peri-
ods of darkness. If dinosaurs could survive six months of Arctic win-
ter and darkness, how could a few months of alleged cosmic winter
kill them off? Said Clemens, "But survive they did, as we see in the
fossil record."
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0
The most vicious attack came from Robert Bakker, formerly of
the University of Colorado Museum, the originator of the theory
that the dinosaurs had been warm-blooded and fast moving: "The
arrogance of those people is simply unbelievable," he said of the pro-
impactors. "They know next to nothing about how real animals
evolve, live, and become extinct. But despite their ignorance, the
geochemists feel that all you have to do is crank up some fancy
machine [presumably the iridium analyzer] and you've revolution-
ized science. The real reasons for the dinosaur extinctions have to do
