# The KT impact: deaths on the day found in Dakota **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 30, 2019, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757 "2019-03-30T09:47:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/21 "2019-03-30T21:24:48Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > That would have been fine if you hadn’t included the silliness about the \*New Yorker \* piece being a piece of fluff, followed up with the pretentiousness of saying it was “101 material” and only for people who “didn’t know anything about paleontology.” You should probably stop digging now. It took 17 paragraphs before it got past the “Cretaceous Extinction 101” recap. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/22 "2019-03-30T21:29:40Z")
> [@Filbert](#): > > Can we just take a moment to appreciate the picture at the start of the [BBC](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-47755275) article? > > I think it’s the bubbles that really make it. Regarding the floating ceratopsian, that’s also based on evidence from the site. A ceratopsian bone was found near the highwater mark of the flood, but probably couldn’t have floated there unless it still had flesh around it. In fact, some skin was found attached to the bone. Another tidbit is that feathers found at the site appear to match a dinosaur similar in size to _Dakotaraptor_ previously found by DePalma in the area. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/23 "2019-03-30T21:30:53Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > It took 17 paragraphs before it got past the “Cretaceous Extinction 101” recap. Stop digging. You’re no Roy Chapman Andrews. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/24 "2019-03-30T21:32:06Z")
(Edit timed out) It took 17 paragraphs before it got past the “Cretaceous Extinction 101” recap. Then the paragraphs about DePalma’s personal history. I skimmed the article so broadly that it took a second reading for me to notice that there were actually new details waaaay at the bottom. So yes, there turns out to be good stuff there, if you get past the fluff. (And no, I wasn’t aware that Preston had a background in science and not just in writing pulp fiction–I’ve never touched any of his stuff.) ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/25 "2019-03-30T21:33:29Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > After all, Andrews was a great popularizer and wrote the first “real” dino book I read. Nothing wrong with writing for the general public. Yeah, my first dinosaur book was [_All About Dinosaurs_](https://i.etsystatic.com/6239616/r/il/05088c/1591894754/il_fullxfull.1591894754_5yt2.jpg) by Andrews. I still have it. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/26 "2019-03-30T21:52:26Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > After all, Andrews was a great popularizer and wrote the first “real” dino book I read. Nothing wrong with writing for the general public. I agree–I have bookshelves filled with paleontology books written for the general public, even ones that focus on human-interest fluff (one of the most beautifully put-together and illustrated being [_Unearthing the Dragon_ by](https://www.amazon.com/Unearthing-Dragon-Mark-Norell/dp/0131862669)[Mark Norell](https://www.amazon.com/Unearthing-Dragon-Mark-Norell/dp/0131862669), which is as much if not more about living in China as it is about feathered dinosaurs–if you don’t have a copy, you are missing something.) I don’t know what my first “real dinosaur book” was–possibly [_The Dinosaur Heresies_](https://www.amazon.com/Dinosaur-Heresies-Unlocking-Dinosaurs-Extinction/dp/0688042872)? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/27 "2019-03-30T21:55:08Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > (Edit timed out) > It took 17 paragraphs before it got past the “Cretaceous Extinction 101” recap. Then the paragraphs about DePalma’s personal history. I skimmed the article so broadly that it took a second reading for me to notice that there were actually new details waaaay at the bottom. So yes, there turns out to be good stuff there, if you get past the fluff. > (And no, I wasn’t aware that Preston had a background in science and not just in writing pulp fiction–I’ve never touched any of his stuff.) The New Yorker hasn’t been doing nearly as much science as they did back when Jeremy Bernstein was a contributor (not counting climate change and ecology stories.) An extinction 101 recap is going to be valuable for most of its readers. Most articles in the New Yorker, including those by John McPhee, include personal history. I’m waiting for my dead tree version of the New Yorker to read the story (it was in the Times this morning) but I’ve subscribed to it for about 40 years, so I know it pretty well. In a country where there are way too many creationist idiots, an accessible paleontology article is nothing to sneeze at. Not that the New Yorker base includes a lot of creationists. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2019, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/28 "2019-03-30T23:49:42Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Both are incredible discoveries. And the [largest known T. Rex skeleton](https://www.history.com/news/worlds-biggest-t-rex-canada-scotty-dinosaur) was revealed recently as well. Scotty the T-Rex has been on public display for a decade or two at the Dino centre at Eastend, Saskatchewan (Eastend is located in the western edge of the province, of course 🙂 .) What’s new is that they’ve accurately re-sized it, which is what enabled them to conclude that Scotty is the biggest T-Rex ever found. For instance, the Royal Sask Museum, just down the street from Chez Pipers, has the original reconstruction of the skull, compared to the much larger reconstruction they were able to get after more accurate sizing of the bone fragments. Clan Piper actually went out to the dig back when Scotty had just been found and got a tour from the palaeontologists who were working on it. Fascinating to see some of Scotty’s bones still _in situ_, poking out of the ground in the trenches. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/29 "2019-03-31T00:11:44Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Scotty the T-Rex has been on public display for a decade or two at the Dino centre at Eastend, Saskatchewan (Eastend is located in the western edge of the province, of course 🙂 .) > > What’s new is that they’ve accurately re-sized it, which is what enabled them to conclude that Scotty is the biggest T-Rex ever found. For instance, the Royal Sask Museum, just down the street from Chez Pipers, has the original reconstruction of the skull, compared to the much larger reconstruction they were able to get after more accurate sizing of the bone fragments. > > Clan Piper actually went out to the dig back when Scotty had just been found and got a tour from the palaeontologists who were working on it. Fascinating to see some of Scotty’s bones still _in situ_, poking out of the ground in the trenches. I misunderstood. I knew it was discovered a while back. Somehow I got the impression it was being shown to the public for the first time. But just the recalculation is significant, showing the T. Rex could be larger and heavier than previously known. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/30 "2019-03-31T01:57:36Z")
Yes, some of the articles (especially articles from Alberta) have been making it sound like Alberta paléontologistes have discovered the biggest T-Rex ever! Closer reading indicates that the Albertans were involved in the re-calculations of the size. Here’s a link to the RSM, currently showing a picture of a teacher with the reconstructed skull. (It may change soon; I think they update their pictures fairly regularly. ) [http://www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/rsm?asset=2386-ig-1819878260047599215\_228219529](http://www.royalsaskmuseum.ca/rsm?asset=2386-ig-1819878260047599215_228219529) ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/31 "2019-03-31T02:03:02Z")
Sorry - that should have said “a model of the reconstructed skull” ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/32 "2019-03-31T02:57:13Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Yeah, my first dinosaur book was [_All About Dinosaurs_](https://i.etsystatic.com/6239616/r/il/05088c/1591894754/il_fullxfull.1591894754_5yt2.jpg) by Andrews. I still have it. Mine, too! He made the Gobi romantically scary. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/33 "2019-03-31T05:59:22Z")
> [@dropzone](#): > > Mine, too! He made the Gobi romantically scary. I got All About Dinosaurs in the 3rd grade, and of course went to the Museum of Natural History to see the eggs. I loved his dinosaur books - my wife loved his books of exploration, so we were a perfect match. I don’t have my original copy, but I have one I found at a library sale. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/34 "2019-03-31T17:22:14Z")
Another tidbit from the New Yorker article: DePalma things that the size of juvenile fish and the presence of certain seeds and pollen indicates the impact took place in the fall. In the Cretaceous it would have been hot year-round, but daylength changes would be about the same, and such changes would have been even more pronounced farther north. This may have been fortunate if some animals were beginning to enter dormancy or hibernation. Also, the maximum amount of seeds may have been around. Extinctions could have been even greater if the asteroid had hit during the spring or summer. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/35 "2019-03-31T17:37:44Z")
Another thing I found fascinating in that article is the report of DePalma’s speculation that the events recorded at the site “_… did not span the first day of the impact: it probably recorded the first hour or so. This fact, if true, renders the site even more fabulous than previously thought. It is almost beyond credibility that a precise geological transcript of the most important sixty minutes of Earth’s history could still exist millions of years later—a sort of high-speed, high-resolution video of the event recorded in fine layers of stone._” ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 5:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/36 "2019-03-31T17:58:23Z")
Yeah, the fact that tektites were found in the gills of some of the fish would seem to narrow the time frame down to the time when they were still falling. ---
**Author:** ![YamatoTwinkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/cc9497/32.png) [@YamatoTwinkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YamatoTwinkie)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/37 "2019-03-31T18:24:16Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > Even more astonishing, the burrow seems to have been dug _through_ the KT boundary layer. That is, the mammal survived the disaster, then dug down through the layers of rubble afterward. It was born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleogene. Maybe I missed it, but why does this necessarily mean that the mammal was born in the Cretaceous? Couldn’t it have simply dug a hole down through the KT layer hundreds or thousands of years later? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/38 "2019-03-31T19:19:52Z")
> [@YamatoTwinkie](#): > > Maybe I missed it, but why does this necessarily mean that the mammal was born in the Cretaceous? Couldn’t it have simply dug a hole down through the KT layer hundreds or thousands of years later? He speculated “might” and “may.” Though in the lab you might could tell something about how settled the mud when it was dug (still soft or dried out) and the age of the infill. To me, the most interesting thing in the _New Yorker_ article is [this photo](https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5c9d2658dec8304049bc4de1/master/w_1548,c_limit/190408_r34054.jpg)–the tektite at the bottom (too big to be a “micro” tektite) has punched through a number of [varves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varve), distorting the edges, and left a conical crater at the surface (with the “surface” halfway down the specimen) that was infilled with light colored sediment. Below the tektite the sediment is compressed downwards in a lens shape, and the fact that the tektite is off-center of the area of damage _may_ indicate the angle that it was traveling as it fell. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/39 "2019-03-31T23:47:04Z")
I read the related BBC article about the reconstruction of the impact of the asteroid itself. It mentioned that the centre of the impact would have momentarily been raised up higher than Mt Everest, then collapsed. Wow. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2019, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757/40 "2019-03-31T23:48:04Z")
Follow-up question: how did they find the impact crater, which is off the coast of Yucatán? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-kt-impact-deaths-on-the-day-found-in-dakota/831757.md?page=3)