[meteorite-list] Re: Did a Comet Swarm Kill the Dinosaurs?

From: Robert Verish <bolidechaser_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:08:27 2004
Message-ID: <20020917224934.84085.qmail_at_web80305.mail.yahoo.com>

------------------ Original Message -----------------

[meteorite-list] Re: Did a Comet Swarm Kill the
Dinosaurs?
E.P. Grondine epgrondine_at_yahoo.com
Sun, 15 Sep 2002 11:57:52 -0700 (PDT)

Hi all -

If my memory serves me, (I seem to remember that
Pacific Ocean recovery was not a carbonaceous
chondrite), that another comet besides this one may
have hit an asteroid and sent it into the Earth would
seem highly likely -

About every 26 million years or so (the process is
chaotic), when the Earth passes through the plane of
our solar system, The Milky Way, there is an influx of
comets and mass extinctions usually ensue.

I don't know where we are in this impact-extinction
process now, but perhaps the recent cometary impacts
with the Earth amd the impact of Shoemaker-Levy 9 with
Jupiter may have some bearng on this -

ep

--- baalke_at_jpl.nasa.gov wrote:
>
>
<http://skyandtelescope.com/news/current/article_738_1.asp>
>
> Did a Comet Swarm Kill the Dinosaurs?
> By David Tytell
> Sky & Telescope
> September 13, 2002
>
> In 1991 a modern scientific 'whodunit' was solved
> when geologists identified a deeply buried,
> 180-kilometer-wide crater in the Yucatán peninsula.
------------------------

Does anyone know if there has been a more recent
classification for this meteorite:

Kyte F.T. (1998) A meteorite from the
Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. Nature 396, 237-239.

Here is what Kyte (1998) said of the meteorite
fragment that was found in the K-T boundary layer:

"The fossil meteorite from DSDP Hole 576 appears to be
from (1) a chondritic meteorite with (2) significant
amounts of metal and sulphide (4-8%), (3) large
inclusions [>200 um] of mafic minerals that also
contained metal, and (4) 30-60% fine-grained matrix.
The known meteorite groups that best fit these
criteria could be the CV, CO, and CR carbonaceous
chondrites."

http://www.ess.ucla.edu/faculty/kyte/


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Received on Tue 17 Sep 2002 06:49:34 PM PDT