When Did We Die? New Doubts About Dinosaur Extinction.
Joel Kontinen
In the mind of the layman, some scientific hypotheses have become true after they have been repeated time and again. We have, for instance, all heard that dinosaurs became extinct when an asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago.
However, this hypothesis has recently encountered great difficulties.
It is a rather old belief. In the late 1970s or early 1980s Luiz Alvarez and his colleagues found surprisingly high levels of iridium around K-T boundary (the Cretaceous - Tertiary boundary). In addition, as most scientists assumed that there were very few dinosaur fossils in the Tertiary, they concluded that the dinos must have become extinct after an asteroid hit the Earth.
An impact crater found in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico supported the view.
A new fossil find weakens the credibility of this hypothesis. Recently a study published in the journal Palaeontologia Electronica suggests that not all dinosaurs died at the time of the asteroid impact. Jim Fassett of the U. S. Geological Survey in Sante Fe, New Mexico, and his colleagues examined dinosaur bones recently found in the Ojo Alama Sandstone in the San Juan Basin. Their detailed chemical investigations suggest that some dinosaurs outlived the asteroid impact.
Fassett and his team also examined the rocks surrounding the bones in order the rule out the possibility of flowing water having deposited the fossils into younger rocks.
In other words, the fossils were found in too young rocks.
From a creationist perspective, it is an interesting scenario that supports the young earth model. Most dinosaurs probably died in the global flood of Noah’s day when volcanoes might well have erupted and asteroids hit the Earth.
But unfortunately, mainstream science has not discarded the myth of a billions of years old Earth.
Many scientific discoveries support the Genesis account of the age of our planet. For instance, the recent discovery of collagen in dinosaur bone and carbon 14 found in diamonds are rather strong evidences for a young earth.
Source:
Moskowitz, Clara. 2009. Some Dinosaurs Survived the Asteroid Impact. LiveScience (28 April)
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090428-lost-dinosaurs.html
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