Research Catalog
Night comes to the Cretaceous : dinosaur extinction and the transformation of modern geology
- Title
- Night comes to the Cretaceous : dinosaur extinction and the transformation of modern geology / James Lawrence Powell.
- Author
- Powell, James Lawrence, 1936-
- Publication
- New York : W.H. Freeman, [1998], ©1998.
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | QE506 .P735 1998 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- xvi, 250 pages : illustrations, map; 25 cm
- Summary
- What killed the dinosaurs? For many years, this question has been one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science. Then in 1980, a radical theory was proposed: 65 million years ago, an asteroid or comet as big as Mt. Everest, traveling at 100,000 miles per hour, struck the earth, throwing up a dust cloud that darkened the sky, caused the temperature to plummet, and killed the dinosaurs and 70 percent of all other species.
- Night Comes to the Cretaceous is the first comprehensive and objective account of how this fantastic theory changed the course of science. The author, Director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History tells the dramatic story of how Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son Walter stumbled onto evidence suggesting that a single random event caused the extinction of the dinosaurs - a claim many scientists found unbelievable.
- After years of bitter debate and intense research, an astonishing discovery was made - an immense impact crater buried deep in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico that was identified as Ground Zero. The unbelievable appeared to be true.
- Subjects
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 223-244) and index.
- Contents
- Prologue: The Greatest Mystery -- Pt. I. Bolt from the Blue. Ch. 1. The Alvarez Discovery. Ch. 2. The Past as Key to the Present. Ch. 3. Stones from the Sky -- Pt. II. Was There a K-T Impact? Ch. 4. Theory on Trial. Ch. 5. Counterattack. Ch. 6. The Volcanic Rival. Ch. 7. To Catch a Crater -- Pt. III. Did An Impact Cause the K-T Mass Extinction? Ch. 8. Clues from the Fossil Record. Ch. 9. A Whimper or a Bang? Ch. 10. The Death of the Dinosaurs -- Pt. IV. The Transformation of Geology. Ch. 11. Are All Mass Extinctions Caused by Collision? Ch. 12. Are Extinction and Cratering Periodic? Ch. 13. Geology's Golden Age.
- ISBN
- 0716731177
- LCCN
- 98013192
- OCLC
- ocm38430444
- Owning Institutions
- Columbia University Libraries