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Article: Dinosaurs were zapped 65 million years ago - but how?
- Article from:
- Chicago Sun-Times
- Article date:
- February 4, 1988
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright (null) Chicago Sun-Times. (Hide copyright information)
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In the old mansion that houses the Lunar and Planetary
Institute, next door to NASA, Buck Sharpton, a scientist in a tweed
jacket and blue jeans, spreads a map of the world marked with 116
small circles. It tells a story of past excitements and denotes a
current controversy.
The hotly disputed hypothesis is that the evolution of life on
Earth has been marked by radical disjunctions, particularly one 65
million years ago, because of collisions of Earth with comets or
other extraterrestrial material. What is not disputed is that 65
million years ago there were mass extinctions that included
dinosaurs.
It is unclear how abrupt the disappearance of the dinosaurs was
and, in any case, they ...