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" T. rex and the crater of doom / "
Walter Alvarez.
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BL
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| Record Number
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632375
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| Doc. No
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dltt
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| Main Entry
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Alvarez, Walter,1940-
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| Title & Author
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T. rex and the crater of doom /\ Walter Alvarez.
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| Series Statement
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Princeton science library.
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| Page. NO
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xxii, 185 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates :: illustrations (some color), color map ;; 24 cm.
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| ISBN
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9780691131030
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: 0691131031
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| Notes
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"Third printing, and first paperback printing, with a new foreword by Carl Zimmer, for the Princeton Science Library, 2008"--Title page verso.
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| Bibliographies/Indexes
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Includes bibliographical references (pages 147-169) and index.
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| Contents
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Armageddon -- Ex Libro Lapidum Historia Mundi -- Gradualist versus catastrophist -- Iridium -- The search for the impact site -- The creater of doom -- The world after Chicxulub.
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| Abstract
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From the publisher. Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mt. Everest slammed into the Earth, causing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized impactor and debris from the impact site were blasted out through the atmosphere, falling back to Earth all around the globe. Terrible environmental disasters ensued, including a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the genera of plants and animals on Earth had perished. This horrific story is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific murder mystery what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? In T. rex and the Crater of Doom, the story of the scientific detective work that went into solving the mystery is told by geologist Walter Alvarez, one of the four Berkeley scientists who discovered the first evidence for the giant impact. It is a saga of high adventure in remote parts of the world, of patient data collection, of lonely intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of intense public debate, of friendships made or lost, of the exhilaration of discovery, and of delight as a fascinating story unfolded. Controversial and widely attacked during the 1980s, the impact theory received confirmation from the discovery of the giant impact crater it predicted, buried deep beneath younger strata at the north coast of the Yucatn Peninsula. The Chicxulub Crater was found by Mexican geologists in 1950 but remained almost unknown to scientists elsewhere until 1991, when it was recognized as the largest impact crater on this planet, dating precisely from the time of the great extinction sixty-five million years ago. Geology and paleontology, sciences that long held that all changes in Earth history have been calm and gradual, have now been forced to recognize the critical role played by rare but devastating catastrophes like the impact that killed the dinosaurs.
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| Subject
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Catastrophes (Geology)
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Extinction (Biology)
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Cryptoexplosion structures-- Mexico-- Campeche, Bay of, Region.
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Chicxulub Crater.
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| Dewey Classification
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576.84
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| LC Classification
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QE506.A48 2008
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| Parallel Title
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Tyrannosaurus rex and the crater of doom
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