Lemmy.World

Not sure if TIL-type posts are allowed here, but thought that the story of the history of this event is interesting in a "history of science" type of way. If you want a narrative style of telling, you can check out this Smithsonian piece.

Story time! I watched Jurassic Park again recently and there is a bit in the movie where there is a discussion about competing theories for how the dinosaurs met their end. I didn't realize that back in the early 90's the impact theory was just one of a competing number of theories, so I did some reading.

Turns out that while doing readings to explore for gas/oil in the Caribbean, the Mexican state oil company, Pemex, had found evidence for the Chicxulub crater way back in the 1940's, but dismissed it as volcanic activity and moved on since volcanic regions are not great for oil extraction.

Fast forward to the late 70's and geophysicists are making additional measurements for Pemex and correctly ID the ring structure of these readings as a likely impact crater. The company is not really interested but consent to allow them to present their findings.

The cruel irony is that the conference at which the findings were presented occurred the same week that there was a special, separate conference with impact crater experts to discuss the impact theory of the end of the dinosaurs. So, there were no experts in attendance to learn about Chicxulub crater's existence from the Pemex scientists or recognize it's importance.

It took another 9 years, 1990, before the two worlds connected and further action was taken to ID Chicxulub as the impact crater that corresponded to the exact time period scientists were looking for.

Then, finally, it was 2010 before scientific consensus was (generally) reached that Chicxulub is the impact that ended the dinosaurs.