Gerta Keller
Professor of Paleontology and Geology in the Geosciences Department of Princeton University (USA)
I read the article on the dinosaur extinction in the journal of Science that proposed the dinosaurs "were not in long-term decline but were instead ended abruptly by the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact". This ‘theory’ was first proposed by Luis Alvarez, Nobel Prize winner and his Geologist son Walter in 1980 with great fanfare. Ever since then the theory has been repeated with little or no change and most people believe it. The article is not of good quality because much information is omitted.
In contrast, the alternate theory of climate and environmental change leading to the dinosaurs long-term decline over 300 to 400 hundred thousand years is well documented by dinosaur experts. But the asteroid impact theory remains unquestionably accepted by many dinosaur experts to this day.
What is the true age of the asteroid impact? This question has been consistently ignored and/or denied by impactors, including discoveries of pristine impact glass the spherules in 1999 and 2000 and new drilling in 2003. The true age the Chicxulub impact was discovered to have crashed in Yucatan 200,000 years BEFORE the mass extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. The impact caused no significant environmental change or extinctions. It was a mere blip in our universe as life continued as usual.
Then 66 million years ago volcanic eruptions exploded caused unprecedented inferno and rapid extinction of the dinosaurs along with the smallest species survivor, the tiny single-celled Guembelitria cretacea that still survives today. This is the mass extinction that caused the end of the dinosaurs and other species 66 million years ago. And so it’s not an asteroid that caused the mass extinction, but massive volcanic eruptions in India.
[About the article] Rather poor quality with the same errors and incomplete data repeated. Existing evidence has been outdated for decades, but still today the same “theories are repeated”. There is no new evidence, just repeat of old believes. I see no new data, just the same old believes that never changed.