Re: cause of death at KT

["franklin e. bliss" <frank@blissnet.com>]

I think all the air gets sucked out of your alimentary canal.    
Unless you are under bedrock, the topsoil your burrow is in would be  
removed along with anything else not cement hard and well tied down.   
Similar to a strong tornado removing a asphalt from a road bed.   
Anything on the same side of the planet had a bad day.

Frank (Rooster) Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming
www.cattleranch.org

On Aug 31, 2006, at 8:31 AM, Scott wrote:

> Franklin Bliss wrote
> "Disruption of the food chain, disease, climate change, fires, habitat
> disruption, acid rain, competition for limited resources and other   
> causes
> all had an effect on the overall extinction process at the K/ T. "
>
> I'd say, for North America at least, don't forget the blast wave of  
> the
> impact as cause of death factor.
>
> If the boys from Arizona (Marcus, Melosh, and Collins) are right in  
> their
> algorithm for computing effects of an impact, then even at 1500  
> kilometers
> away from the site the blast wave is still traveling at 164 m/s  
> (366 mph),
> given an impact angle of 45 degrees, an impacting object density of  
> 3000
> kg/m cubed and an impact velocity of 32 km/sec (about 20 miles/s).  
> I don't
> know when the curvature of the earth sends this blast wave off  
> overhead.
>
> What does that heavy a blast wave do to living flesh 1500 k away  
> from its
> source? There would be shadowed areas not affected, I suppose. But  
> if you
> are a small shrewlike critter happenstancely burrowed in when the  
> blast wave
> goes overhead, what happens? Does all the air get sucked out of  
> your burrow?
>
> Scott Perry