X-Nico

2 unusual facts about Frank Asaro


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.

Walter Alvarez

Alvarez and his father Luis W. Alvarez are most widely known for their discovery (with Frank Asaro and Helen Michel) that a clay layer occurring right at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary was highly enriched in the element iridium.


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.


see also