The Day the Dinosaurs Died Page #3

---

'A second clue comes from the

surprising mix of species

'that had lived in many

different environments.'

I mean, I can pick out large vertebrates.

Sure. We see the occasional bird here.

There's a tibia from a crocodile.

And that's laying next to a

piece of the outer shell

of a huge sea turtle,

something that would be maybe

a meter-and-a-half across.

'And just a few feet away,

'Ken found another turtle from a

different part of the ocean.'

This is a coastal-living turtle.

You can see how tightly articulated it is.

The shell doesn't flex, so

we know that this turtle

didn't dive deeply in the ocean.

This animal was living around the

coast, in the shallow water.

So, what do you think you've got here?

All this stuff died suddenly,

and was buried all at about the same time,

so that means all the stuff

that comes in from the coast

has to come in suddenly.

And that tells us that there is an

environmental disturbance going on

on the coastline, up-shore from here.

Whatever was the cause,

this calamity that wiped out these animals,

it was happening in the deep water,

it was happening along the coastline,

and it's happening on land.

Ken's theory is controversial,

but if he's right,

this could be the first fossil evidence

of a sudden mass death event at

the end of the Cretaceous...

right at that point in time when

75% of life on Earth is wiped out.

But what caused this mass death event?

Could all these animals have been

killed by the impact of an asteroid

1,700 miles away in the Gulf of Mexico?

Ben is with the scientists who

have been drilling into the seabed

above the asteroid crater.

I'm here, right in the middle

of the drilling platform,

and there's a fresh core about to come out.

We've already drilled through 500

metres of limestone sediment.

Now, we're going to start

to bring up rock core

for the scientists to examine as we

get closer to the impact crater.

This is the first full

core of the expedition,

we're excited to say.

The first full, three-meter-long core,

some light layers.

We're wondering if they're

ashes or something.

We're pretty excited.

This, along with other

core samples like it,

can tell the team so much information

about what was going on at

the time of the impact.

The first thing the team

does with each new core

is find out how old the rock is.

Exactly what's living,

exactly what fossils we find

tell us what age we are.

As soon as the core comes up on deck,

we are given a small crumb of material,

we take it back to the

lab and give an age call

within five minutes of the

core appearing on the deck.

I just got some sweet pictures.

Look at this crystal -

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes