Dinosaur Killers Read online

  Dinosaur Killers

  by

  Alexander Popoff

  An asteroid killed off the dinosaurs?

  Are you kidding me?

  The K comet extinction mechanism.

  147 dinosaur extinction theories.

  Dinosaur Killers

  Copyright © 2014 by Alexander Popoff

  All Rights Reserved

  www.alexanderpopoff.com

  Published in the United States in America

  Also by Alexander Popoff:

  The Hidden Alpha

  Introduction

  Working on my book The Hidden Alpha, I stumbled many times across the possibility of the extinction of human civilization.

  Life on Earth, including all human individuals, is constantly threatened to be destroyed by a series of perils: global nuclear war, high-tech industry and laboratory accidents, nuclear terrorism, unfriendly alien visitation, human-caused global warming, lethal contamination by extraterrestrial microorganisms, dangerous science experiments, etc. The list of existential risks is long enough, and it is becoming longer with time.

  We are also frequently told that humanity could be smashed by an asteroid like the one that killed off the dinosaurs and stopped their evolutionary advance.

  Indeed, several dinosaur species were very manlike: they stood around two meters high on their two hind legs, and they had a relatively large braincase and hands with opposable thumbs. Their forelegs with three slender, flexible fingers were ready for use as hands.

  Many scientists believe that if dinosaurs had continued to evolve, they probably would have evolved sophisticated brains and would have created a civilization, landing on the Moon and roaming space sixty-six million years before us. Having such a tremendous head start, if dinosaurs had a bit more time to evolve, now they could be masters of the entire Galaxy.

  And human civilization would never exist on Earth.

  Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in an interview, stated that, “The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program.”

  Even being the dominant species for many millions of years couldn’t save the dinosaurs.

  The nearly instantaneous, geologically speaking, extinction of the most species on Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period raises important questions about human destiny and the survival of our civilization. In order to prevent the demise of mankind we should know exactly what happened sixty-six million years ago—and, more importantly, how to possibly prevent similar devastating catastrophes.

  Especially taking into account that the number of existential risks to humanity is increasing.

  Facing the possibility of human extinction and keeping in mind the tragic example of the dinosaur annihilation, some scientists are advocating space colonization as the only way for our civilization to survive. This is because our planet is a very dangerous place to live, and in the near future it will be an even more risky spot as a result of the fast-developing, hazardous high-tech technologies, along with their military and terrorist implications, and the inevitable alien visitation.

  Aliens, just like humans, are developing, too, and they also have their own daring space programs. They could destroy mankind accidentally or intentionally. Advanced extraterrestrial space civilization could wipe out man in order to colonize our Goldilocks Earth, Mars, and the Moon. Such planets as Earth are rare in space and they are of great value and huge demand for spacefaring civilizations. When humans start roaming space, our descendants will also be looking for suitable planets to colonize.

  Stephen Hawking said, “I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet.”

  “During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars,” wrote Paul Davies in 2004 for The New York Times.

  Carl Sagan wrote in his book Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, “Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring.”

  A large and very vocal group of folks from the academic and entertainment businesses have convinced us that the dinosaurs were destroyed by an asteroid and that such a space body can annihilate humans.

  But was an asteroid actually the real culprit for the extinction of the dinosaurs, the dominant species of the Mesozoic period? Can such a space body really annihilate our civilization?

  Humans should have a more realistic picture of the perils that happened in the past, to be more prepared to survive now and in the near future. For the distant future would take care our descendants, if humanity survives.

  I started my own research on dinosaur extinction because there are too many problems with the asteroid theory now prevalent among scholars.

  The asteroid theory can’t explain many specifics of the Cretaceous mass extinction events, like the presence in the soil of extraterrestrial amino acids typical of meteorites for tens of thousands of years before and after the impact; the loss of part of Earth’s atmosphere; the multiple layers of iridium and extraterrestrial amino acids before and after the impact; the extraterrestrial soot in the boundary layer; and many other peculiarities.

  Researchers reported that they had found isovaline and aminoisobutyric acid deposited for tens of thousands of years before and after the Cretaceous catastrophe. In the boundary clay itself there are no such amino acids. Some meteorites are rich in organics, but how were these amino acids delivered constantly from space for such a long period of time (about 100,000 years), and what is the connection with the dinosaur extinction? Why there are no such amino acids in the boundary clay itself?

  The Chicxulub asteroid couldn’t deliver extraterrestrial amino acids for tens of thousands of years before and after the impact.

  The iridium enrichment, supposedly a key proof for asteroid impact, has problems, too.

  Researchers are reporting findings of locations where the iridium is deposited in more layers than only one, as it should be in the case of an asteroid impact. Multiple asteroid impacts? Did a few asteroids hit before and some after the main impact that killed off the dinosaurs? And what delivered the iridium and the extraterrestrial amino acids between the impacts?

  For example, Lattengebirge, in the Bavarian Alps, has three iridium anomalies, below and above the boundary. The oldest anomaly antedates the boundary by 9,000 to 14,000 years.

  According to Dewey McLean, the following sites have multiple iridium layers: Nanxiong Basin, South China—6 spikes, Braggs, Alabama—3 spikes, Brazos River, Texas—2 spikes, El Kef, Tunisia—2 spikes, Beloc, Haiti—2 spikes.

  Günther Graup and Bernhard Spettel from the Max-Planck-Institut wrote, “Multiple Ir (iridium) anomalies are in contrast to most reported K/T sections which are characterized by a single Ir peak.”

  “The distribution of Ir anomalies provides evidence of episodic Ir-delivering events over an extended period of time.”“In the Lattengebirge K/T sediments no indications of shock are found.”

  Since there is no evidence for asteroid impacts, Graup and Spettel came to the conclusion that the iridium enrichment had a common nonimpact source, and they thought this was a volcano.

  There are no craters found as a result of the hypothetical multiple asteroid impacts, there are no shocked quartz layers indicating impacts, there were no multiple extinction events, even minor ones.

  But the volcano hypothesis can’t explain enrichment with extraterrestrial amino acids, which coincide with the iridium enrichm
ent, nor the large amounts of extraterrestrial fullerenes (a form of carbon) in the boundary layer, etc.

  Another problem: tektites (small pieces of natural glass formed during bolide impacts) decrease in size with increasing distance from the impact site until they are altogether absent, but “The positive Ir anomaly has been recorded at 85 sites and appears to have been spread homogeneously all around the globe. Concentration does not vary systematically with distance from the crater,” wrote Philippe Claeys, Wolfgang Kiessling, and Walter Alvarez in their article “Distribution of Chicxulub ejecta at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary.”

  If it was an asteroid impact, iridium levels should follow the same distribution pattern as the tektites. Why has iridium been spread homogeneously all around the globe,while the tektites decrease in size with increasing distance from the impact site until they are altogether absent?Anasteroid impact can’t cause such a peculiar distribution pattern.

  Jason Moore and Mukul Sharma from Dartmouth College in New Hampshire compiled all published data on iridium and osmium amounts from the boundary layer. In their final analysis, the overall iridium and osmium levels were much lower than those that scientists had been using for decades, which indicates a smaller impactor. “But an asteroid that size would not make a 200 km-diameter crater,” wrote Moore.

  So what caused the huge crater if it wasn’t an asteroid?

  There were also other asteroid impacts that created huge craters; however, there were no extinctions in those cases at all.

  “But the problem with this theory is that we have lots of large craters—100 kilometers in diameter—caused by asteroids that aren’t linked to any extinctions,” said Shanan Peters, a professor of geology.

  Some researchers think that the Chicxulub-sized asteroid is just too small to cause the mass extinction.

  An asteroid the size of the Chicxulub space bolide can’t destroy human civilization (or cause a mass extinction) despite the claims of so many scientists, futurists, science fiction writers, and moviemakers. Yes, it would cause tremendous damage, but dinosaurs and humans would survive and thrive.

  So, what could cause such a huge crater and the mass extinction, if it wasn’t an asteroid? What could deliver amino acids and iridium from space before and after the impact? What delivered from space large amounts of fullerenes and soot during the impact?

  Numerous scholarly articles have reported high contents of soot in the boundary-clay layer. Asteroid theory says that, close to the impact site, wildfires were ignited by the impact fireball, whereas globally they were ignited by radiation from the reentry of hypervelocity ejecta.

  Here, the problem is that most of the soot in the boundary layer is specific, as if created by burning petrol or other carbohydrates. What was that mysterious material that burned and contributed to the large part of the soot that covered the entire surface of the Earth? Some interpretations have suggested that the soot from carbohydrates came from the combustion of fossil fuels such as crude oil, coal, or oil shales near the Chicxulub impact site. But the homogenous distribution pattern and the composition of the soot do not support such a hypothesis. Secondly, the research of the noble gases in the fullerenes from boundary-clay samples confirmed that they are of extraterrestrial origin, not created by wildfires.

  The asteroid hypothesis is very nice and sexy, and very cinematic, but it can’t explain in a satisfactory way all the specifics of the massive Cretaceous die-off.

  The picture of the Cretaceous catastrophe is too rich and complicated for such a simplistic picture provided by the asteroid advocates.

  Only the K comet theory (K for Cretaceous, or Killer) can explain all the peculiarities of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction.

  Dinosaurs and humans could survive the Chicxulub asteroid, but they couldn’t survive the K comet events.

  The following is an overview of theories, trying to explain this major riddle in the natural history of our planet.

  While reading, keep in mind that whatever killed off the dinosaurs and the rest of the extant species, could annihilate humans, too.

  On the other hand, without their extinction we would not be here.

  1. The K comet extinction mechanism.

  The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, formerly known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary, marks the limit between the Mesozoic world and the post-dinosaur era. It is a thin grey, yellowish, or reddish line, from about a few millimeters to 1–2 cm, and is found as a consistent layer all over the Earth.

  It coincides with the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period. Above that boundary layer there are no dinosaurs. About 75 percent of the Cretaceous species perished in the catastrophic events.

  The impact extinction event is well recorded all over the planet.

  Three-meter gap

  One of the most hotly contested questions in paleontology revolves around the three-meter gap in the fossil record immediately prior to the boundary layer. The fossil record shows an apparent lack of dinosaur fossils before the mass extinction. Some scientists suggested that this three-meter gap proves that dinosaurs were extinct long before the catastrophic events.

  In 1993, John Horner and Don Lessem reported that no dinosaur remains are found within about three meters below the boundary in Montana. They called this the three-meter gap, and suggested that it represents perhaps 100,000 years. Some researchers believe that this supports the idea that the mass extinction was a gradual rather than a sudden event.

  Zillions of animals, including many billions of dinosaurs, should have died off during the impact itself and soon after. Why is there no pile-up of huge amounts of bones at the boundary? Earth should be littered with innumerablesmall and large bones.At the end of the Cretaceous, the total biomass of the species (also kilograms of animal meat per square kilometer) was larger than now. When most of the creatures died off in a very short period of time, the land, seas, rivers, and oceans should have been covered with dead bodies. Bones can’t just disappear. What happened to the dinosaurs and other Cretaceous animals? Did they disappear long before the impact events, as many researchers suggest?

  In 1997, Gregory Retallack, a paleontologist and soil scientist at the University of Oregon, proposed in his article “Dinosaurs and Dirt” that the gap is due to acid rain dissolving bones and fossils after the impact. He wrote, “Bone is abundant in calcareous or smectitic paleosols that were alkaline in chemical reaction when forming, but bone dissolves in acidic soils and leaf litter.”

  After the bolide impact at the end of the Cretaceous leaf litter, all sort of plant remnants, heavy acid rains, acidified waters, and rotting animal bodies were found in tremendous quantities.

  Vivi Vajda and Stephen McLoughlin wrote in their article “Fungal Proliferation at the Cretaceous-Tertiary Boundary” that during a very short period of a few years, fungi and other saprophytes, which live on dead flora and fauna, must have been the dominant life form on Earth. “This fungi-rich interval implies wholesale dieback of photosynthetic vegetation at the K-T boundary in this region.”

  Non-photosynthetic flora, like fungi, were able to thrive and dominate.

  The entire Earth was a gargantuan compost heap of vegetation remnants and dead animals, with a myriad of fungi breaking down the debris soaked with acid rain.

  This could answer the frequent question of where are the heaps of bones of the billions of huge animals that died in the catastrophe. They were dissolved, just like eggshells in vinegar.

  The acid rains also dissolved most of the bones and the fossils of the animals that died during the previous thousands of years. Marble, limestone, sandstone, and newly formed fossils can easily be dissolved by acid rain.

  Researchers have observed that acid rains from volcano eruptions also destroy animal bones in a wide area. Quite possibly, Deccan Traps lava flows also contributed to the acid rains.

  In their article “Dinosaur extinction: closing the ‘3 m gap,’” Tyler R. Lyson and his teamreported in the Royal Society j
ournal Biology Letters their discovery of a distinctive brow horn from a Ceratopsian dinosaur just 13 centimeters below the boundary.

  They wrote, “The in situ specimen demonstrates that a gap devoid of non-avian dinosaur fossils does not exist and is inconsistent with the hypothesis that non-avian dinosaurs were extinct prior to the K–T boundary impact event.”

  On the other hand, there is not the three-meter gap if one includes footprints. In their book Dinosaur Tracks and Other Fossil Footprints of the Western United States, 1995, Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt wrote that a set of hadrosaur and ceratopsian tracks were found in a sandstone shelf only 37 cm (less than 15 inches) below the K-Pg boundary layer near Ludlow, Colorado.

  Additional dinosaur tracks have also been found within the three-meter gap.

  Dinosaur footprints seem to be more acid resistant than fossilized bones.

  In conclusion, there were dinosaurs to the very end prior to the catastrophic events, and there were prolonged, massive, acidic rains.

  K-PG Boundary Layer

  First of all, we should find out what was that tremendously powerful event that could create a boundary layer of clay all over the globe: an asteroid (as most scientists believe), a comet, massive volcanic activity, or something else. And what could cause heavy acid rains for such a long period of time. Theories that can’t explain the forming of a boundary layer worldwide and massive acid rains should be discarded. There are also many other criteria when it comes to discarding dinosaur extinction theories.

  The boundary layer could tell us what caused the Cretaceous catastrophe. Luis Alvarez and his team suggested that it represents a mixture of terrestrial and extraterrestrial rock dust. The boundary layer was formed from ejected dust material that fell out of the atmosphere.