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From: Ndunlks@aol.com
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 01:08:03 -0500 (EST)
Fwd Date: Mon, 17 Feb 1997 06:39:16 -0500
Subject: Experts Find Fatal Asteroid Clue
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By PAUL RECER
.c The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (Feb. 16) - Scientists who drilled core samples from the ocean
bed said Sunday they have found ''smoking gun'' evidence that a huge asteroid
smashed into the Earth 65 million years ago and probably killed off the
dinosaurs.
''We've got the smoking gun,'' said Richard D. Norris, leader of an
international ocean drilling expedition that probed the Atlantic Ocean floor
in search of asteroid evidence. ''It is proof positive of the impact.''
Norris said the expedition recovered three drill samples that have the
unmistakable signature of a asteroid impact about 65 million years ago. The
drill cores include a thin brownish section that the scientists called the
''fireball layer'' because it is thought to contain bits of the asteroid
itself.
''These neat layers of sediment bracketing the impact have never been
found in the sea before,'' Norris said in a telephone interview. ''It is
proof positive of the impact.''
The scientists, working on the drill ship Joides Resolution, spent five
weeks off the east coast of Florida collecting cores from the ocean floor in
about 8,500 feet of water. The team penetrated up to 300 feet beneath the sea
bed, drilling past sediments laid down at the time of the dinosaur
extinction.
Norris said the deepest layers contain fossil remains of many animals and
came from a healthy ''happy-go-lucky ocean'' just before the impact.
Just above this is a layer with small green glass pebbles, thought to be
ocean bottom material instantly melted by the massive energy release of the
impact.
Next was a rusty brown layer which Norris said is thought to be from the
''vaporized remains of the asteroid itself.''
The heat of the impact would have been so intense, said Norris, that the
stony asteroid would have instantly been reduced to vapor and thrown high
into the sky, some of it perhaps even reaching outer space. It then snowed
down, like a fine powder, all over the globe. Norris said brown deposits,
like that in the core sample, have been found elsewhere and they have a high
content of iridium, a chemical signature of asteroids.
Just above the brown layer, is a two inches of gray clay with strong
evidence of a nearly dead world.
''It was not a completely dead ocean, but most of the species that are
seen before (early in the core sample) are gone,'' said Norris. ''There are
just some very minute fossils. These were the survivors in the ocean.''
This dead zone lasted about 5,000 years, said the scientist, and then the
core samples showed evidence of renewed life.
''It is amazing how quickly the new species appeared,'' he said.
Although the dinosaur-killing impact occurred in the southern Gulf of
Mexico, Norris went to the Atlantic Ocean, near the edge of the continental
shelf. He said that the violence of the impact, followed by huge waves,
roiled the Gulf of Mexico so much that it is unlikely to find clear core
samples there.
He said the theorized that waves from the impact would have washed
completely across Florida, depositing debris in the Atlantic. And that's
where he found it.
Robert W. Corell, assistant director for Geosciences of the National
Science Foundation, said the core samples are the strongest evidence yet that
an asteroid impact caused the extinction.
''In my view, this is the most significant discovery in geosciences in 20
years,'' he said, also in a telephone interview. ''This gives us the facts of
what happen to life back then. I would certainly call it the smoking gun.''
The ship bearing the core samples returned to port on Friday and the NSF
announced the findings Sunday, coincidentally just hours before NBC was to
air a movie about a fictional asteroid hitting the Earth and causing
widespread destruction.
''The impact of the asteroid featured in tonight's NBC-TV show is peanuts
compared to the real thing faced by the world 65 million years ago,'' said
Corell.
Geologist Walter Alvarez of the University of California, Berkeley, first
proposed in 1980 that the dinosaurs disappeared from fossil history suddenly
because of a massive asteroid hit. At first, the theory had few supporters.
But in 1989, scientists found evidence of a huge impact crater north of
Chicxulub, on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Later studies found evidence of
debris washed out of the Gulf by waves that went inland as far as what is now
Arkansas.
It's now widely believed that an asteroid of six to 12 miles in diameter
smashed to Earth at thousands of miles an hour. It instantly gouged a crater
150 to 180 miles wide.
That energy release was more powerful than if all of the nuclear weapons
ever made were set off at once, said Norris.
Billions of tons of soil, sulphur and rock vapor were lifted into the
atmosphere, blotting out the sun. Temperatures around the globe plunged.
Up to 70 percent of all species, including the dinosaurs, perished. Among
the survivors, scientists believe, were small mammals that, over millions of
years, evolved into many new species, including humans.
AP-NY-02-16-97 2026EST
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Copyright 1997 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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