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The great dinosaur extinction controversy
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The great dinosaur extinction controversy

Author: Charles B Officer; Jake Page
Publisher: Reading, Mass. : Addison-Wesley, ©1996.
Series: Helix books
Edition/Format: Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
In 1980 Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez announced his theory of the dinosaurs final demise: a gigantic meteorite crashed into the earth and raised a cloud of dust that caused darkness for years, suppressing photosynthesis, which impeded plant growth, and eventually starved the dinosaurs. This idea exploded into common awareness with almost unprecedented speed, and was instantly embraced by the media and the public.
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Details

Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Charles B Officer; Jake Page
ISBN: 020148384X 9780201483840
OCLC Number: 34151338
Description: xiii, 209 p. : ill. ; 24 cm.
Contents: 1. The Day of the Meteorite -- 2. Meteorites and Comets -- 3. A Brief History of Dinosaurdom -- 4. Paleonecrology -- 5. Early Dissent -- 6. Science and Politics -- 7. Media Science -- 8. Iridium and Shocked Quartz -- 9. The Silly Season -- 10. The Missing Crater -- 11. What Did Happen -- Afterword: Pathological Science.
Series Title: Helix books
Responsibility: Charles Officer & Jake Page.

Abstract:

In 1980 Nobel Laureate Luis Alvarez announced his theory of the dinosaurs final demise: a gigantic meteorite crashed into the earth and raised a cloud of dust that caused darkness for years, suppressing photosynthesis, which impeded plant growth, and eventually starved the dinosaurs. This idea exploded into common awareness with almost unprecedented speed, and was instantly embraced by the media and the public. Almost without question, it quickly became the hottest scientific "fact.".

Unfortunately for Alvarez, many in the scientific community did to support this theory, and in fact later research showed the impossibility of such an idea. The Great Dinosaur Extinction Controversy chronicles the fantastic story of how this hypothesis became so widespread, the way it became "common knowledge" - from the pages of Science to The New York Times to Parade Magazine, the controversy it caused, and the ample scientific research that proves the theory wrong. Officer and Page also present an attractive and carefully investigated alternative explanation for the mass extinctions that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous period. Through this account they show the ways that sound science should be performed and the findings transmitted.

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