06/11/2021
PaleoQuest ... new exhibit (under development)
THE DAY THE DINOSAURS DIED…
Witness to The Last day of the Cretaceous Period.
66 million years ago an asteroid the size of a mountain slammed into the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico. It was called the Chicxulub impact due to the closest town to its discovery. It was the Late Cretaceous Period, matter of fact, it was the very last day of the Cretaceous period. The resulting crater formed a central peak higher than Mount Everest and an edge rim 200 miles across. The central peak collapsed under its own weight after just a few minutes. The event would have been equivalent of a 10 or 11 magnitude earthquake.
The Chicxulub impact ejected millions of tons of super-heated liquefied terrestrial material from the crater. The ejected material reached up into the stratosphere and began to rain down on North America. As the super-heated material traveled through the atmosphere a great deal of that material turned into impact glass call tektites. The super-heated shockwave traveled in all directions at 1000 miles an hour wiping out everything in its path. A title wave 100 feet high slammed into the coast of North America and traveled up the inland sea that is now Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, Colorado, the Dakotas and Montana. The wave would have traveled the 3500 miles to Montana within10 to 12 hours. By the time it got there, the tektite rain would have already happened more than 9 hours before. Raining Chicxulub tektites, super heated stone and rock set the forests of North America, Mexico and South America on fire.
The impact would have melted the bedrock under the seafloor and pulverized the asteroid sending debris and melted rock into the stratosphere where winds would have carried it around the planet blotting out the sun for months if not years. Within 40 to 45 minutes post impact the super heated shockwave traveled the 3500 miles, passed through Montana, USA and reached Canada over 4000 miles away. The world would burn that day and by the end of that day 60% of all the life on earth would be dead. Within another 10 days that number would rise to 80% and after a month 90% of all life on the Earth would be dead. The second most deadly mass extinction event in the Earth’s history had now been triggered.
This is the most likely theory so far conceived by the scientific community to explain the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. Evidence has been collected that show a boundary formed on the last day of the Cretaceous period of super heated ash and rock that covered the earth. That boundary between what was and what is, is called the KT boundary. Evidence of the KT boundary (The Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary which was defined by geologists in the early 1800s) can be found all over the world as the ash drifted to the surface and coded on all the land masses on earth. That layer of ash called the burn layer is visible all over the globe. Evidence has also been found in satellite photographs that show the impact crater on the Yucatán peninsula which match the time period in which the extinction happened. Tektites linked to the Yucatán impact were found in Haiti. Fossilized evidence of life that existed before the impact including dinosaurs is abundant below the KT boundary but there is no evidence of any dinosaurs above the KT boundary. Scientists have called this event the great burn. Direct evidence of the great burn is exceedingly rare. We can collect samples from the KT boundary which contain Chicxulub microtektites from the impact as far north as Alberta, Canada but since the incident caused incredibly super-heated air, fire and rock there is not much biological evidence that survived. Animals and plants that were alive at the time of impact and suffered through that day were burned to ash. Nothing survived.
Recently a small bone, most likely from a small raptor type dinosaur was found in the burn layer within the KT boundary in Montana. The bone was sent to me by the field crew to create a profile of the fossil remains and have some testing done. Upon a first observations I noticed that the outer layer of the bone, the exposed side, showed evidence of intense heat. The inside of the bone was crystallized silica, again evidence of extreme heat. The bone had been flash burned. Further analysis of the bone indicates that this animal was alive at the point of the flash burn due to microscopic blood bubbles inside the bone.
Also, upon chemical analysis of the matrix and the bone it was discovered that an anomalous concentration of iridium were present. Iridium is an element that is carried to the Earth’s surface by meteorites and asteroid impacts (Alvarez, DePalma). It is exceedingly rare on earth to find iridium and it has become a telltale sign of meteorite impact remains.
Also found in the matrix were numerous impact holes that super-heated the soil around them. The matrix holes are closer to impact structures rather than bubbles. At the bottom and imbedded in the matrix of these impact craters I found several microtektites lodged all around the bone.
The tektites would have come in on a ballistic trajectory from space, reaching velocities of between 100 and 200 mile per hour (Alvarez). Upon closer examination of the matrix, I have found that most of the matrix is composed of fossilized ash, iridium dust and microtektites over mudstone.
Also, within the matrix upon some digging near the bone I discovered evidence of shocked quartz and preserved burned plant material. The matrix around and under the bone, under the ash layer shows that the ground where this dinosaur was walking turned to heat glass as a result of numerous super-heated high velocity microtektite impacts creating mini craters in the soft wet mud.
Analysis of the microtektites by measuring the content of carbonates and evaporites from four drill sites near Chicxulub confirmed that they matched in morphology, chemistry of composition of tektites found in Haiti that are linked to and match the Yucatán peninsula impact event. Also, the iridium signature matches that of the Yucatán peninsula Chicxulub impact event.
It is the conclusion of the analysis of the fossil remains that this small raptor dinosaur was alive to witness the impact event that ended the era of dinosaurs and concluded the cretaceous period. This small dinosaur that was wandering around the marshlands of Montana 66 million years ago was pelted by these burning high velocity tektite rain and consumed by fire that fell from above and burned her world. It is assumed that she either ran into or was blowen into a small wet cave where the body was adequately protected, cooled and covered with ash and partially preserved.
This fossil is direct evidence of the burn and the microtektites found at the site confirmed that this animal died on the last day of the Cretaceous period by the impact event that killed off the dinosaurs. The next day, the Cenozoic Era began. This raptor dinosaur witnessed the day the dinosaurs died.
These are the initial photographs I have taken of the specimen showing the bone with evidence of extreme heat exposure, the inside of the bone, which was hollow indicating it was indeed a raptor filled with crystallized silica, again evidence of extreme heat. The photographs also show microtektites that I exposed and left on the surface. There is also several photographs of the specimen with a ruler for size reference from various angles. Of specific interest is the black microtektite exposed in the lower right corner of the first photo.
