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T. Rex and the Crater of Doom Walter Alvarez, a geologist, did an amazing job at playing detective in the book T. rex and the Crater of Doom. Though even more amazing is how he was able to convey his account, complete with his inevitable setbacks and occasional victories, in a captivating, suspenseful story. This was a good mystery where the crime was almost perfectly concealed and was full of misleading evidence for the detectives to sort through. Most remarkable and significant was his ability to swallow his pride, a rare attribute among scientists, in order to infer with other detectives from different scientific disciplines. This meticulous detective work helped prove the theory of a global mass extinction from an extraterrestrial and eventually uncovered Chicxulub, the K-T impact crater, almost 10 years after the controversy of its existence surfaced into scientific journals. For 65 million years, the story of the dinosaurs has been frozen in time at the small layer of clay called the “K-T boundary.” It was in the early 1970‘s, when studying this layer of clay, that Walter Alvarez began making discoveries within the clay strata. One discovery found within the K-T boundary was several types of ejecta deposits. Among the deposits were an abundant source of spherules, tektites and other unusual fragments. Walter thought that they may have been created under the immense heat of an impacting meteor and then flung under the shock of the impact. A metamorphic rock created under such an environment could be the crucial evidence of an impact, if the right tool could be found- radiometric age dating. At the time, it was already well known that the dinosaurs died out about 65 millions ago, but the process of dating the new metamorphic rocks unique to the K-T boundary would bring about new confirmation of a cataclysmic event. Using these discoveries, Walter was able to make great advances in establishing evidence for the theory of a global mass extinction from an extraterrestrial origin. Slowly and under much scrutiny the case for an impact was coming to life. Possibly the most astonishing thing that Walter uncovered in the K-T Boundary was an anomaly of extremely high iridium levels.
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