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6 unusual facts about Alvarez hypothesis


Alvarez hypothesis

In March 2010 an international panel of scientists endorsed the asteroid hypothesis, specifically the Chicxulub impact, as being the cause of the extinction.

The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and many other living things was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth sixty-five million years ago, called the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

Gerta Keller

Gerta Keller (born 1945) is a paleontologist who contests the Alvarez hypothesis that the Chicxulub caused the mass extinction 66 million years ago.

The main evidence for the Alvarez hypothesis that a single impact resulted in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event that killed the dinosaurs has come from the presence around the world of shocked quartz granules, glass spherules and tektites embedded in a layer of clay with extremely high levels of iridium, all signs of an asteroid impact.

Helen Vaughn Michel

Her work with Frank Asaro at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California (Berkeley) is particularly noteworthy as it includes the dating of Drake's Plate of Brass as well as the Alvarez hypothesis, the hypothesis that posits the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.

William A. Clemens, Jr.

Clemens' research supports a view contrary to the more familiar Alvarez hypothesis model of sudden catastrophic extinction precipitated by an asteroid, which was proposed in part by Walter Alvarez, also at the University of California, Berkeley, at the time.


Timeline of paleontology

1980 — Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel propose the Alvarez hypothesis, that a comet or asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago causing the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, including the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs, and enriching the iridium in the K–T boundary.


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