RE: K-T news

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: Garrison Hilliard [mailto:garrison@efn.org]
>
> Science Frontiers, No. 146, Mar-Apr, 2003, p. 3

Just so people are clear, "Science Frontiers" is a Fortean newsletter: it's
a clearinghouse for supposed anomalous reports relating to science.  At
best, it has cool new news; at worst, it combines pseudoscience and hearsay.

This report, for example, uses some out of date (or just plain incorrect)
information to support a so-far-from-parsimonious-it-ain't-funny hypothesis.

> 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.

The Manson is very, very well dated as a Campanian event, occurring millions
of years prior to the K/T boundary: papers on this were published by Glen
Izett and colleagues in Science back in 1994 or so.

Silverpit is currently dated at 60+/-5 Ma, so it might *just* be a K/T
impactor.  On the other hand, it could very likely be a Paleogene impact.

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

Shades of Zecharia Sitchin and Velikovsky!!

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
                Vertebrate Paleontologist
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
                College Park, MD  20742
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/tholtz.htm
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite
Phone:  301-405-4084    Email:  tholtz@geol.umd.edu
Fax (Geol):  301-314-9661       Fax (CPS-ELT): 301-405-0796