charcoal

[John Alroy <jack@homebrew.uchicago.edu>]

Stan Friesen mentioned that there is little direct evidence for  
massive forest fires at the K-T boundary in the Hell Creek, which may  
or may not be right, I'm not sure. But it's important to keep in mind  
that the Western Interior seaway was quite close to the point of  
impact (in the Yucatan) and that direct effects probably weren't, and  
seem not to have been, as severe in other parts of the world. For  
example, I believe that Kirk Johnson has shown that the plant  
megafloral species do much better in New Zealand than in his classic  
North Dakota section. This is probably NOT true for marine organisms  
because the only decent study I know of (Raup and Jablonski 1993,  
Science 260:971-973) showed clearly that clam extinction percentages  
were uniform around the globe.