Re: Dinosaur top 10 research

[Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com>]

I never bothered to check the DML archives, but here are some points
about what was going on in the early 1980s:

Indeed, the earliest reactions (1980-1985) from many paleontologists
toward Alvarez et al.'s hypothesis on the K-T extinction WERE of
skepticism.  In fact, many were dubious that an impact of that size had
even occurred.  Prior to 1980, the typical paleontologist knew of iridium
only from the Periodic Table.

Alvarez's team were "crossover" scientists and their main thesis was
catastrophism, something that paleontologists and sedimentary geologists
(who were trained in gradualism) were loathe to accept at the time. 
Worse, catastrophism conjured up images of two famous pseudoscience
catastrophists Velikofsky and Von Daniken.  Although it was totally
undeserved, Alvarez's idea was proclaimed guilty by association.

Today, there are many MANY highly regarded paleontologists who still
believe that the K-T extinction was gradual.  But with each passing year,
the extraterrestrial cause of sudden K-T extinction gains more converts
because of increasingly more detailed data and more thorough data
collection.  And, as with many other revolutionary ideas, sometimes it
takes the deaths of the old holdouts before the slate is totally cleaned
of controversy.

<pb>
--

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 21:00:57 +0200 David Marjanovic
<david.marjanovic@gmx.at> writes:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mar Qos Aker" <marqosaker@yahoo.com>
> Sent: Friday, June 17, 2005 3:02 AM
> 
> > After I seached the Archives Page for Alvarez, I looked at the 
> first 40 of 
> > 229 listings and found what was a generally ill recieved opinion 
> of Dr. 
> > Alvarez's hypothesis or did I mis read the postings.
> 
> You didn't misread, you happened to mis-search. :-) Most discussions 
> of the 
> K-Pg boundary mass extinction never mentioned Alvarez's name. Search 
> for 
> "extinction".
> 
> ...But keep in mind that the search engine can only display the 
> first 100 
> results, no matter how many it finds. :-( 
> 
> 
>