Meteorite Impact and Dinosaur Extinction

There is increasing evidence that the impacts of meteorites have had

important effects on Earth, particularly in the field of biological evolution. Such
impacts continue to pose a natural hazard to life on Earth. Twice in the twentieth
century, large meteorite objects are known to have collided with Earth.

If an impact is large enough, it can disturb the environment of the entire

Earth and cause an ecological catastrophe. The best-documented such impact
took place 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous period of geological
history. This break in Earth's history is marked by a mass extinction, when as many
as half the species on the planet became extinct. While there are a dozen or more
mass extinctions in the geological record, the Cretaceous mass extinction has
always intrigued paleontologists because it marks the end of the age of the
dinosaurs. For tens of millions of years, those great creatures had flourished. Then,
suddenly, they disappeared.

The body that impacted Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period was a
meteorite with a mass of more than a trillion tons and a diameter of at least 10
kilometers. Scientists first identified this impact in 1980 from the worldwide layer of
sediment deposited from the dust cloud that enveloped the planet after the impact.
This sediment layer is enriched in the rare metal iridium and other elements that
are relatively abundant in a meteorite but very rare in the crust of Earth. Even
diluted by the terrestrial material excavated from the crater, this component of
meteorites is easily identified. By 1990 geologists had located the impact site itself
in the Yucatán region of Mexico. The crater, now deeply buried in sediment, was
originally about 200 kilometers in diameter.

This impact released an enormous amount of energy, excavating a crater

about twice as large as the lunar crater Tycho. The explosion lifted about 100
trillion tons of dust into the atmosphere, as can be determined by measuring the
thickness of the sediment layer formed when this dust settled to the surface. Such
a quantity of material would have blocked the sunlight completely from reaching
the surface, plunging Earth into a period of cold and darkness that lasted at least
several months. The explosion is also calculated to have produced vast quantities
of nitric acid and melted rock that sprayed out over much of Earth, starting
widespread fires that must have consumed most terrestrial forests and grassland.
Presumably, those environmental disasters could have been responsible for the
mass extinction, including the death of the dinosaurs. Several other mass
extinctions in the geological record have been tentatively identified with large
impacts, but none is so dramatic as the Cretaceous event. But even without such
specific documentation, it is clear that impacts of this size do occur and that their
results can be catastrophic. What is a catastrophe for one group of living things,
however, may create opportunities for another group. Following each mass
extinction, there is a sudden evolutionary burst as new species develop to fill the
ecological niches opened by the event.

Impacts by meteorites represent one mechanism that could cause global

catastrophes and seriously influence the evolution of life all over the planet.
According to some estimates, the majority of all extinctions of species may be due
to such impacts. Such a perspective fundamentally changes our view of biological
evolution. The standard criterion for the survival of a species is its success in
competing with other species and adapting to slowly changing environments. Yet
an equally important criterion is the ability of a species to survive random global
ecological catastrophes due to impacts.

Earth is a target in a cosmic shooting gallery, subject to random violent

events that were unsuspected a few decades ago. In 1991 the United States
Congress asked NASA to investigate the hazard posed today by large impacts on
Earth. The group conducting the study concluded from a detailed analysis that
impacts from meteorites can indeed be hazardous. Although there is always some
risk that a large impact could occur, careful study shows that this risk is quite small.
 The Caravaggio Mystery

Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), usually

known simply as “Caravaggio,” had a dramatic life, of which parts remain
mysterious to scholars even today. Why, then, would it be a surprise that mysteries
also surround his work? For example, The Taking of Christ, one of his paintings
that had been considered lost sinc e the eighteenth century, was rediscovered
in 1990. It had hung, seemingly unrecognized, in the dining room of the Society of
the Jesuits in Dublin, Ireland, for more than fifty years. The discovery that the
painting was, indeed, a Caravaggio, led many to wonder how such a treasure
could be hidden—seemingly in plain sight.

The first clue historians have about The Taking of Christ is in the 1603
accounts of an Italian nobleman, Ciriaco Mattei, who paid 125 “scudi” for “a
painting with its frame of Christ taken in the garden.” At the time, Caravaggio’s
style, with its striking use of light and dark, was admired and often imitated by both
students and fellow artists. However, trends in the art world come and go, and two
centuries later, Caravaggio’s work had fallen out of favor with collectors. In fact, it
wouldn’t be until the 1950s that a Caravaggio “renaissance” occurred, and interest
in the artist was renewed.

In the meantime, The Taking of Christ had traveled far and wide. Ironically, it
was the Mattei family itself that originally misidentified the work, though several
centuries after the original purchase. In 1802, the family sold it as a Honthorst to a
Scottish collector. This collector kept it in his home until his death in 1921. By
1921, The Taking of Christ—now firmly attributed to Gerard van Honthorst—was
auctioned off in Edinburgh for eight guineas. This would have probably been a fair
price if the work had been a van Honthorst; for a true Caravaggio, though, it was
the bargain of the century. An Irish doctor bought the painting and donated it to the
Dublin Jesuit Society the following decade.
 From the 1930s onward, The Taking of Christ hung in the offices of the
Dublin Jesuits. However, the Jesuits, who had a number of old paintings in their
possession, decided to bring in a conservator to discuss restoring them in the early
1990s. Sergio Benedetti, the Senior Conservator at the National Gallery of Ireland,
went to the building to examine the paintings and oversee their restoration.
Decades of dirt, including smoke from the fireplace above which it hung, had to be
removed from the painting before Benedetti began to suspect that the painting was
not a copy of the original, but the original itself.

Two graduate students from the University of Rome, Francesca Cappelletti

and Laura Testa, were primarily responsible for verifying that Caravaggio did, in
fact, create this version of the painting. Over years of research, they found the
1603 Mattei accounts. The verification of the painting, though, went far beyond this
circumstantial evidence. Certifying that a painting came from a certain artist’s hand
is not easy, though forensic science that wouldn’t have been available in the 1920s
helped to attribute the work to Caravaggio definitively. The canvas underwent a
number of treatments. It was X-rayed and scanned with an infrared light. The
cracks on the surface of the painting (known in the industry as “craquelure”) were
studied. Furthermore, The Taking of Christ underwent much analysis by art
historians, who studied the form and color in the painting to determine its
authenticity. For example, Caravaggio never used sketches to set up the
composition of his paintings. Instead, he made marks with the end of his brush as
he painted—marks that can still be visible today.

Of course, the verification of the painting required entire teams of people, in

addition to the three mentioned above, and took years. By 1993, the
announcement was finally made that the long-lost Caravaggio had been found.
Rather than sell the painting, which is most likely worth millions of dollars, the
Jesuits decided to make it available to the nation of Ireland for viewing. Thus, the
painting is on “indefinite loan” to the National Gallery of Ireland. Nevertheless, the
painting continues its travels as it features in exhibitions around the world, from the
United States to Amsterdam. In 2010, it even travelled back to Rome to be
displayed for the 400th anniversary of the painter’s death. A fitting tribute, many
would say, to a mysterious master.

"The Heredity Versus Environment Debate"

The past century has seen heated controversy about whether

intelligence,which relates strongly to school achievement, is determined primarily
by heredity or by environment. When lQ tests were -undergoing rapid
developmentearly in the twentieth century, many psychologists believed that
intelligencewas determined primarily by heredity.

Environmentalist view: By the middle of the twentieth century,

numerousstudies had counteracted the hereditarian view, and most social
scientiststook the position that environment is as important as or even more
importantthan heredity in determining intelligence. Social scientists who stress
theenvironmentalist view of intelligence generally emphasize the need for continual
compensatory programs beginning in infancy. Many also criticize theuse of IQ tests
on the grounds that these tests are culturally biased.

James Flynn, who collected similar data on other countries, found that.
"massive" gains in the IQ scores of the population in fourteen nations have
occurred during the twentieth century. These improvements, according to Flynn's
analysis, largely stemmed not from genetic improvement in the population but from
environmental changes that led to gains in the kinds of skills assessed by IQ tests.
Torsten Husen and his colleagues also have concluded, after reviewing large
amounts of data, that improvements in economic and social conditions, and
particularly in the availability of schooling, can produce substantial gains in average
IQ from one generation to the next. In general, educators committed to improving
the performance of low-achieving students find these studies encouraging.

Hereditarian view: The hereditarian view of intelligence underwent a major

revival in the 1970s and 1980s, based particularly on the writings of Arthur Jensen,
Richard Herrnstein, and a group of researchers conducting the Minnesota Study of
Twins. Summarizing previous research as well as their own studies, these
researchers identified heredity as the major factor in determining intelligence-
accounting for up to 80 percent of the variation in IQ scores.

Jensen published a highly controversial study in the Harvard

EducationalReview in 1969. Pointing out that African-Americans averaged about
15 points below whites on IQ tests, Jensen attributed this gap to a genetic
difference between the two races in learning abilities and patterns. Critics
countered Jensen's arguments by contending that a host of environmental factors
that affect IQ, including malnutrition and prenatal care are difficult to measure and
impossible to separate from hereditary factors. IQ tests are biased, they said, and
do not necessarily even measure intelligence. After his 1969 article, Jensen has
continued to cite data that he believed link intelligence primarily to heredity. His
critics continue to respond with evidence that environmental factors, and schooling
in particular, have a major influence on IQ.

Synthesizers' view: Certain social scientists have taken a middle, or "syn-

thesizing," position in this controversy. The synthesizers' view of intelligenceholds
that both heredity and environment contribute to differences in measured
intelligence. For example, Christopher Jencks, after reviewing a large amount of
data, concluded that heredity is responsible for 45 percent of the IQ variance,
environment accounts for 35 percent, and interaction between the two
("interaction" meaning that particular abilities thrive or wither in specific
environments) accounts for 20 percent. Robert Nichols reviewed all these and
other data and concluded that the true value for heredity may be anywhere
between 0.40 and 0.80 but that the exact value has little importance for policy. In
general, Nichols and other synthesizers maintain that heredity determines the fixed
limits of a range; within those limits, the interaction between environment and
heredity yields the individual's intelligence. In this view, even if interactions
between heredity and environment limit our ability to specify exactly how much of a
child's intelligence reflects environmental factors, teachers (and parents) should
provide each child with a productive environment in which to realize her or his
maximum potential.

Radiocarbon method

The method of Radiocarbon dating was invented in the late 1940s by Willard
Libby. It is a method to determine the age of an object by using radiocarbon
properties. Radiocarbon is created in the atmosphere through the interaction of
nitrogen and cosmic rays. When combined with oxygen, carbon dioxide is
produced. CO2 enters plants through photosynthesis; animals and humans
incorporate carbon when they eat plants. After the death of a plant or animal, the
rate of carbon begins to decline – this is called the radioactive decay of carbon.
When analysts measure the amount of carbon in this decayed object, they can
calculate when it died. The furthest date that has been reliably measured back to is
around 50,000 years.

Research into the proportion of carbon in the atmosphere has been going on for
more than five decades. Due to the increase in the burning of fossil fuels and
nuclear testing in the 20th century, there was a significant increase in the level of
carbon in our atmosphere, so this adds to the complication of carbon calculation.
Originally, scientists used samples of solid carbon for testing. However, they
realized that converting the samples to liquid or gas offered more precise results.
Accelerator mass spectrometry is the current method of analysis. All carbon atoms
in the sample are counted; its results are fast and very accurate.

Archaeology has been profoundly affected by progress in radiocarbon dating.

Faunal analysis has also been impacted by progress in this area. Faunal analysis
is the study of the remains of animals with the aim to help us understand human
activities in the past.

At the end of the Pleistocene Era, there were many rapid extinction of megafauna,
particularly in the Americas. There is a notable report by Vartanyan et al. on the
extinction of pygmy mammoths, dating them back to 3700 years before present
using radiocarbon dating. Other scientists have used this method to calculate the
age of the extinct species in the La Brea tar pits in California. In their faunal
analysis, they employed a pre-treatment method that included the use of tar. They
collected bones, divided them into small pieces and chips and crushed them. The
bone fragments were treated with a variety of solvents, including benzene, to
examine a species of Cuban Caribbean ground sloth and the Xenarthra armadillo.
Carbon was then examined and radiocarbon dates were obtained from the organic
material separated from the tar. Scientists were able to date the sloth remains to
around 5400 before present. This information is important as it may show that the
extinction of the sloth was caused by human arrival in Cuba.

Much work is necessary to further investigate the abundant fossil materials found
in Central and South American pits, including those of Talara, Peru, where there
are a lot of remains of extinct megafauna and human artefacts. Ongoing studies of
these sites can help to verify the theories of extinction and the impact on human
behaviour.

[6] One notable achievement in radio carbon dating is Two Creeks Fossil Forest.
During the 20th century, a goal of geologists was to establish the date of transition
from the Pleistocene to the Holocene era. The Pleistocene epoch began 2.6 million
years ago and the current, Holocene period began 11,700 years ago. In Wisconsin,
USA, a fossil forest called Two Creeks was discovered. Prior to radiocarbon dating,
the trees in this forest had been dated back to around 24,000 years ago, the
estimated date for the end of the Pleistocene period. This estimate had been made
through correlation with sequences in Scandinavia. Libby and later scientists
investigated Two Creeks and used radiocarbon dating to date the trees more
accurately. Samples from the fossil forest were used in tests in over 70 labs, dating
the trees back to 13,730 before present. This achievement is now considered a
notable result in the development of our understanding of glaciation in North
America o9ipññ