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citement about geology, his son's chosen field, in best fatherly fash-
ion he spent many hours in discussion with Walter, each describing
his scientific work to the other. Luis noted that "the close personal
relationship Walt and I enjoyed dissolved the cross-disciplinary
barriers." 6 One day in the mid-1970s, returning from a field trip to
Italy, Walter produced a geological specimen that, for once, his
father did find exciting; Luis would later say that it had "rejuve-
nated" his scientific career.
THE SON
IN
ITALY
Given his family history, it is not surprising that young Walter be-
came a scientist himself. No one could have followed in his father's
footsteps, and wisely in retrospect, Walter chose not to try but to
follow his own love, geology. He earned his doctorate at Princeton
under Professor Harry Hess and, until Qaddafi expelled the Ameri-
cans, worked as a petroleum geologist in Libya. In 1971 he joined the
faculty at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at Columbia
University, where much of the research that led to the plate tec-
tonic revolution had been done. After a few years there, Walter ac-
cepted a position at Berkeley, the university where his father was in
residence and where Walter soon received tenure and the title of
full professor. Had Walter remained in Libya or at Lamont-Doherty,
we might still be scratching our heads over the mystery of dinosaur
extinction.
During the 1970s, Walter summered in the pleasant northern
Italian town of Gubbio, where he studied an unusually complete
section of sedimentary rock that spanned the time from the middle
of the Mesozoic era well up into the Cenozoic era. Geologists divide
the Mesozoic into three periods: The oldest, the Triassic, is overlain
by the Jurassic, which in turn is overlain by the Cretaceous (Figure
2). The earliest, lowest period in the Cenozoic is called the Tertiary.
Its name hearkens back to an earlier time when there were thought
to be four ages of rocks: primary, secondary, tertiary, and quaternary;
only the last two are used today. The Mesozoic-Cenozoic boundary
marks the point in geologic time at which the dinosaurs perished. It
has become customary, however, to nickname the boundary for the
two adjacent periods, the Cretaceous and Tertiary, rather than their
eras. Geologists call it the "K-T" boundary. ("K" is used instead of
"C" to avoid confusion with the older, Cambrian period; Cretaceous,
which comes from the Latin creta, for chalk, also happens to be
Kreide in German.)
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