K-T news

[Garrison Hilliard <garrison@efn.org>]

Science Frontiers, No. 146, Mar-Apr, 2003, p. 3

GEOLOGY

The KTB Bombardment

Both the media and the scientific community have a fixation on the Yucatan
crater Chicxulub as *the* cause of the KTB (Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary)
catastrophism.  Actually, this period of terrestrial mayhem may have had
multiple causes.  The recent discovery of "Silverpit," a multi-ring crater,
2-20 kilometers wide, on the floor of the North Sea, is the *thirteenth*
impact crater associated timewise with the 65-million-year-old KTB.  Only
one of the thirteen is in North America: the Manson crater in Iowa.

These thirteen KTB craters have a global distribution, not the hemispherical
pattern expected if they were due to the breakup of an asteroid on a collision
course with earth.  Rather:

   The clear implication of this global cratering (temporal) cluster
   is the explosion of a planet-sized parent body elsewhere in the
   solar system.

(Van Flandern, Tom; "13th Impact Crater Associated with the K/T Boundary,"
*Meta Research Bulletin,* 11:61, 2002.)