Niiiice chemical analysis of the tektites protected in amber blebs!
No other major extinction event is so strongly linked to an impact. Most took place over millions of years, rather than suddenly. Impacts have been suggested to have been involved in the Jurassic-Triassic mass extinction, but that was somewhat smaller, and the Permian, the biggest of all, but many other factors were involved in the Permian, some of them prolonged. If you are talking about the biggest single-day catastrophe to life on Earth, this is it.
Stephen Brusatte (quoted in the article I posted last night) is one of the experts. His feedback boils down to “what the hell, dude?”
Yeah, more “most important single day” than “single most important day.” (Though I’d argue that When Earth Met Theia (coming soon to a theater near you) was the most important single day in the history of Earth.)
Here’s the PNAS embargo rules. They restrict publication to 3 PM the Monday of the publication week.
The New Yorker article is not really based on the PNAS paper (although it is mentioned as to be published “next week,” so they were aware of it), so embargo rules wouldn’t apply to that. The New Yorker almost certainly would not have been sent a copy in advance of publication, although DePalma could have provided one. Embargo rules would have applied to the BBC, Berkeley and Science Daily press releases, but and they are all dated March 29, three days before the official publication of the article. Perhaps they received permission to publish before the weekend.
Embargo rules wouldn’t prevent a publication like the New Yorker from publishing additional details about a find based on interviews with scientists. There is a lot of confusion, especially on the part of non-scientists, in thinking that all the details in the New Yorker need to be supported by the first scientific article about the find.
Despite his credentials, his comments were pretty stupid for a scientist:
The Wire article says this:
What the New Yorker article actually says is:
It also mentions DePalma’s find of the ceratopsian, and nine probable dinosaur feathers.
It’s evident that most of the dinosaur remains consist of teeth and bone fragments. These would be adequate to identify different dinosaur groups, but would not be very spectacular.
Calling this a “dinosaur graveyard” or a “mass of dinosaur fossils” is nonsense, and seem to be deliberate exaggerations intended to discredit the article. They are a kind of “reverse hype,” claiming the article said something it never said.
If anything, it’s a “fish graveyard” but I guess that’s not as sexy-sounding.
There isn’t enough room for a mass of dinosaur fossils. It’s what, four feet thick?
That’s pretty much what the Berkeley and Science Daily articles say:
The New Yorker article never uses the word “graveyard.” The only people using the term “dinosaur graveyard” are those complaining that it doesn’t exist, even though they are the ones that made it up.
A lot of dinosaurs are small (arguably, I have three of them living in my house with me and not one of them is more than 10 inches long including the tail and no more than 3 ounces in weight) and there’s no requirement that dinosaur remains in this lagerstatte be intact in any way. Certainly some of the fish shown are in pieces.
So Brian Switek–the other guy quoted in that article–has his latest article out (he posts under the name “Riley Black”, for some reason) and there is something wrong with it because it was discovered by a white guy, or something?
I thought the label “apoplectic ham hocks” on that page was particularly appropriate.
Yeah, and also more with the “mass dinosaur boneyard” shit, and not acknowledging that the New Yorker article didn’t violate any embargo any more than the Berkeley and other releases did.
Haven’t had a chance to get my hands on a hard copy here in London yet. But Douglas Preston has had a superb record of archaeology articles in the New Yorker, so I do have a sense of anticipation about this one.
Seriously, someone should do an anthology of his New Yorker pieces.
Sure they would. Tell researchers we won’t publish your work if you first publicize it elsewhere. Be that by publishing it yourself, disclosing it to a journalist who publishes it, or presenting it at a conference.
They clearly don’t do that now and seem ok with that.
Pretty much because it would be ridiculous and stupid. I take it you don’t work in any scientific field? Conferences and seminars mainly consist of unpublished results, since if they are published other scientists will be aware of them and wouldn’t have a reason to attend. (Plenary lectures may present an overview and synthesis of previously published work.) Such presentations are an important way to get feedback from your peers, refine your research, and identify collaborators. Prohibiting that would fundamentally change how science is done. And if you give a presentation at a conference, then it is available to journalists, many of whom attend such conferences.
I regularly present some of my unpublished research that could eventually lead to publications in public seminars, and also have discussed it with interviewers from the press and seen it published in newspapers and magazines. I would hate to think I would have to be secretive if I wanted to get something published.
I can fully understand why they are keeping the location of the site secret, and being very careful who they invite there.
Imagine having large numbers of journalists, scientists, assorted crackpots, and amateur and commercial fossil hunters turning up there every single day. How would it be possible to work? How much expensive security would it take to keep them out? How much damage would it do to the site? In this case secrecy makes sense, as does the long interval between the discovery of the site and publishing results.
One day perhaps it will be properly funded, there will be proper security, maybe a large roof built over the site, a small museum. Until then, the least said about the location the better.
Saying the New Yorker violated the embargo is particularly stupid considering that Preston was shown the site five years ago, and has kept quiet ever since. Embargoes make sense to keep an article from being leaked early, but that isn’t remotely what happened here.
I was struck by how little the New Yorker article talked about dinosaurs.
Just out of curiosity, were you in the “dinosaurs were almost dead anyhow” camp?
“snail-like marine cephalopods called ammonites”
That’s just … inaccurate.
True.
I found that really jarring.