Discovery of fossilized fish may shed light on the day an asteroid hit earth, killing the dinosaurs - KCRG

HELL CREEK, North Dakota (ABC) -- The discovery of a fossilized fish may offer a glimpse into the day an asteroid hit the earth and wiped dinosaurs off the planet 66 million years ago, according to a new study.

A study to be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers a scientific first: a detailed snapshot of the terrible moments right after the Chicxulub impact — the most cataclysmic event known to have befallen life on Earth. (Courtesy: KU News Service)

The "exquisitely-preserved" fossils, some of which are of fish with hot glass in their gills, were found in North Dakota's Hell Creek Formation and are thought to have formed after an asteroid slammed into Mexico, causing flaming debris to rain onto the ground, according to a press release from the University of Kansas.

The fossils offer the first-ever "detailed snapshot of the terrible moments right after the Chicxulub impact — the most cataclysmic event known to have befallen life on Earth," the release states.

The impact wiped out about 75 percent of the animal and plant species living on Earth at the time, including dinosaurs.

The fossilized creatures lived in the vicinity of a deeply chiseled river, according to the release. A rushing surge of water in the minutes after the impact likely created the "tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures," which were all preserved in a layer in the rock formation discovered by Robert DePalma, a University of Kansas doctoral student in geology.

The fish were killed "pretty suddenly because of the violence of that water," said the study's co-author, David Burnham, preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. One of the fossilized fish had broken in half after it hit a tree, Burnham said.

Finding these hundreds of ancient fish fossils is even more significant because the fish are cartilaginous instead of bony, and less prone to fossilization, Burnham said. Scientists are also discovering new species within the collection of fossils.

The planet was "inherited" by mammals after the asteroid's impact, Burnham said.

"We've understood that bad things happened right after the impact, but nobody's found this kind of smoking-gun evidence," he said. "People have said, 'We get that this blast killed the dinosaurs, but why don't we have dead bodies everywhere?' Well, now we have bodies. They're not dinosaurs, but I think those will eventually be found, too."

The study will be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, according to the University of Kansas.

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2019-03-31 21:44:21Z
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Entire sky lights up as fireball flashes over Florida Saturday night - AccuWeather.com

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1. Entire sky lights up as fireball flashes over Florida Saturday night  AccuWeather.com
2. Meteor lights up the night sky over northern Florida  CNN
3. Meteor lights up the skies over Florida with bright flash  Fox News
4. Watch: Massive meteor lights up Florida sky  NOLA.com
5. A meteor lights up the night sky across the Big Bend, South Georgia  WCTV
6. View full coverage on Google News

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2019-03-31 19:38:00Z
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Asteroid Aftermath: Stunning Fossils Discovery Details the Day Dinosaurs Were Wiped Out - The Weather Channel

An asteroid impact near what's now the Yucatan Peninsula caused giant waves in an inland sea that sloshed into the mouth of a river, leaving a fossilized record of the day the dinosaurs were wiped off the planet.

(Illustration courtesy of Robert DePalma via UC Berkley)

• A site in North Dakota nicknamed Tanis has perfectly preserved fossils of fish, animals and plants.
• The fossil layer formed when a killer asteroid struck off what is now the Yucatan Peninsula.
• Some of the fossilized fish at the site inhaled tiny glass beads formed by the impact.

Buried for 66 million years, a prehistoric graveyard is revealing what happened in the minutes after a giant asteroid slammed into the Earth and wiped out the dinosaurs, a new study says.

The site, part of the Hell Creek Formation in what is now North Dakota, used to lie along an inland sea that divided North America into two land masses.

“Essentially, what we've got there is the geologic equivalent of high-speed film of the very first moments after the impact,” paleontologist Robert DePalma, the study's lead author, told National Geographic.

Perfectly preserved fossils of fish, animals and plants at the site, which is nicknamed Tanis, offer a detailed recording of what happened immediately after the killer asteroid struck off Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, according to the study to be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The impact created a giant crater, called Chicxulub, and it ejected tons and tons of vaporized rock and asteroid dust into the atmosphere. The cloud that enveloped the planet led to the extinction of 75 percent of life on Earth and the end of the Cretaceous period.

(MORE: Asteroid That Wiped Out Dinosaurs Plunged Earth Into Catastrophic, Years-Long 'Winter', Study Says)

“We’ve understood that bad things happened right after the impact, but nobody’s found this kind of smoking-gun evidence,” study co-author David Burnham of the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute said in a statement. “People have said, ‘We get that this blast killed the dinosaurs, but why don’t we have dead bodies everywhere?’ Well, now we have bodies. They’re not dinosaurs, but I think those will eventually be found, too.”

Within 45 minutes to an hour, thousands of tiny glass beads formed by the impact began to rain down on the site. Some of these beads, called tektites, were inhaled by the fish in the inland sea, according to a University of California Berkley news release about the study. The tektites would later be found stuck in the fishes' gills. Other tektites, zooming out of the atmosphere at 100 to 200 mph, landed in the mud left by waves from the inland sea. Others are thought to have caused wildfires across the entire continent.

The asteroid's impact also set off shockwaves that caused the inland sea to slosh like water in a bathtub. The waves washed sturgeon, paddlefish and other marine creatures onto a sandbar at the mouth of a river where they were stranded.

Fossilized fish stacked atop each other suggests they were flung ashore and died stranded together on a sand bar after the waves from the inland sea withdrew.

(Courtesy of Robert DePalma via UC Berkley)

The tektites and other debris from the impact fell for another 10 to 20 minutes. Another big wave sloshed out of the sea and covered everything with sand, gravel and fine sediment.

“A tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures was all packed into this layer by the inland-directed surge,” said DePalma, a University of Kansas doctoral student and a curator at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida.

In addition to fish and marine organisms, DePalma, who has worked at the site not far from Bowman, North Dakota, for the past six years, has found parts of a triceratops, a duck-billed hadrosaur, insects, mammals, bones from a marine reptile called a mosasaur, and burned trees and conifer branches. He also found feathers that may have belonged to a dinosaur, according to an extensive article about the find in the New Yorker.

They're all in the sedimentary layer known as the K-T boundary that marks the end of the Cretaceous period and the beginning of the Tertiary period. It's also called the K-Pg boundary.

“This is the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found associated with the K-T boundary,” DePalma said. “At no other K-T boundary section on Earth can you find such a collection consisting of a large number of species representing different ages of organisms and different stages of life, all of which died at the same time, on the same day.”

(WATCH: Ancient Jewish Village Discovered Underneath Jerusalem)

Mark Richards, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus and professor of earth and space sciences at the University of Washington, said, “It’s like a museum of the end of the Cretaceous in a layer a meter-and-a-half thick."

DePalma said, “It’s difficult not to get choked up and passionate about this topic. We look at moment-by-moment records of one of the most notable impact events in Earth’s history. No other site has a record quite like that. And this particular event is tied directly to all of us — to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet. Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs."

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2019-03-31 19:08:22Z
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Meteor lights up the night sky over northern Florida - CNN

"Caught some strange light falling from the sky up by Youngstown tonight!," posted Eric Shultz, who captured the phenomenon on his doorbell camera at his home in the state's panhandle.

"Dude, did you see that?!," someone exclaimed in this video shot on Jeffrey Cardona's dashcam in Jacksonville.

It turns out the bright light was from a meteor, according to the National Weather Service. Its flash was caught on the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), a satellite that takes hundreds of images each second and maps the paths of lightning storms.

"Meteors coming into the Earth's atmosphere happen fairly often but we don't always get to see them," said CNN meteorologist Haley Brink. "Nowadays we have so many satellites in space and cameras on the ground that these events are becoming more and more visible to the general public."

Sightings of the meteor were reported across north Florida.

"Tonight I was out on my way home and I saw something pretty crazy," said a YouTube user in Gainesville. "Luckily, my dash cam caught it."

It's not clear whether the meteor hit Earth or burned up in space.

The National Weather Service said it heard unconfirmed reports that the meteor landed near Perry, Florida, some 55 miles southeast of Tallahassee.

If someone thinks they found pieces of the meteor, scientists would need to run tests to determine if it is in fact a space rock.

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2019-03-31 17:17:00Z
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Meteor lights up the skies over Florida with bright flash - Fox News

A mysterious fireball that lit up the skies over Northern Florida on Saturday night turned out to be a meteor that was picked up on weather radar, according to officials.

The falling space rock was reported around 11:52 p.m. over Taylor County, the National Weather Service's Tallahassee office said on Twitter.

The flash from the meteor was so bright it was picked up on weather satellites that are typically used to track thunderstorms and lightning.

US DETECTS METEOR EXPLOSION 10 TIMES THE ENERGY AS ATOMIC BOMB: REPORT

The NWS posted a photo where the fireball was picked up by the GOES Lightning Mapper

Another weather service office in Charleston, S.C., also shared the light that was detected from the fireball as it streaked across the sky.

'METEOR' OVER LOS ANGELES TURNS OUT TO BE STUNT FOR LAST SUPERMOON OF 2019

Officials said they haven't received any reports of where the meteor possibly landed or if it broke up in the atmosphere. Residents in Georgia and South Carolina also reported seeing the flash.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Meteors are what happened when meteoroids -- what we call "space rocks" -- enter Earth’s atmosphere at a high speed and burn up, according to NASA.

"This is also when we refer to them as 'shooting stars,'” the agency notes. "Sometimes meteors can even appear brighter than Venus -- that’s when we call them 'fireballs.'"

Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day, according to NASA.

"When a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite," the space agency states.

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2019-03-31 16:48:50Z
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Fossilized fish discovery may shed light on the day a major asteroid hit earth - ABC News

The discovery of a fossilized fish may offer a glimpse into the day an asteroid hit the earth and wiped dinosaurs off the planet 66 million years ago, according to a new study.

The "exquisitely-preserved" fossils, some of which are of fish with hot glass in their gills, were found in North Dakota's Hell Creek Formation and are thought to have formed after an asteroid slammed into Mexico, causing flaming debris to rain onto the ground, according to a press release from the University of Kansas.

(MORE: Newly found Chinese fossils from 518 million years ago show explosion of life)

The fossils offer the first-ever "detailed snapshot of the terrible moments right after the Chicxulub impact — the most cataclysmic event known to have befallen life on Earth," the release states.

(Robert DePalma/Kansas University/AFP/Getty Images) This photo taken, March 29, 2019, by the University of Kansas,shows a partially exposed, perfectly preserved 66-million-year-old fish fossil uncovered.The site appears to date to the day 66 million years ago when a meteor hit Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet.

The impact wiped out about 75 percent of the animal and plant species living on Earth at the time, including dinosaurs.

(MORE: Remarkable fossil of 180-million-year-old 'sea monster' preserved its Jurassic-era blubber and skin)

The fossilized creatures lived in the vicinity of a deeply chiseled river, according to the release. A rushing surge of water in the minutes after the impact likely created the "tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures," which were all preserved in a layer in the rock formation discovered by Robert DePalma, a University of Kansas doctoral student in geology.

The fish were killed "pretty suddenly because of the violence of that water," said the study's co-author, David Burnham, preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute. One of the fossilized fish had broken in half after it hit a tree, Burnham said.

(MORE: Fossils of massive meat-eating dinosaurs found)

Finding these hundreds of ancient fish fossils is even more significant because the fish are cartilaginous instead of bony, and less prone to fossilization, Burnham said. Scientists are also discovering new species within the collection of fossils.

(Robert DePalma/Kansas University/AFP/Getty Images) The University of Kansas' Robert DePalma(L)and field assistant Kylie Ruble(R) excavate fossil carcasses from the Tanis deposit, March 29, 2019.

The planet was "inherited" by mammals after the asteroid's impact, Burnham said.

“We’ve understood that bad things happened right after the impact, but nobody’s found this kind of smoking-gun evidence,” he said. “People have said, ‘We get that this blast killed the dinosaurs, but why don’t we have dead bodies everywhere?’ Well, now we have bodies. They’re not dinosaurs, but I think those will eventually be found, too.”

The study will be published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, according to the University of Kansas.

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2019-03-31 16:15:05Z
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Meteor lights up the skies over Florida with bright flash - Fox News

A mysterious fireball that lit up the skies over Northern Florida on Saturday night turned out to be a meteor that was picked up on weather radar, according to officials.

The falling space rock was reported around 11:52 p.m. over Taylor County, the National Weather Service's Tallahassee office said on Twitter.

The flash from the meteor was so bright it was picked up on weather satellites that are typically used to track thunderstorms and lightning.

US DETECTS METEOR EXPLOSION 10 TIMES THE ENERGY AS ATOMIC BOMB: REPORT

The NWS posted a photo where the fireball was picked up by the GOES Lightning Mapper

Another weather service office in Charleston, S.C., also shared the light that was detected from the fireball as it streaked across the sky.

'METEOR' OVER LOS ANGELES TURNS OUT TO BE STUNT FOR LAST SUPERMOON OF 2019

Officials said they haven't received any reports of where the meteor possibly landed or if it broke up in the atmosphere. Residents in Georgia and South Carolina also reported seeing the flash.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FOX NEWS APP

Meteors are what happened when meteoroids -- what we call "space rocks" -- enter Earth’s atmosphere at a high speed and burn up, according to NASA.

"This is also when we refer to them as 'shooting stars,'” the agency notes. "Sometimes meteors can even appear brighter than Venus -- that’s when we call them 'fireballs.'"

Scientists estimate that about 48.5 tons (44,000 kilograms) of meteoritic material falls on Earth each day, according to NASA.

"When a meteoroid survives its trip through the atmosphere and hits the ground, it’s called a meteorite," the space agency states.

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https://www.foxnews.com/science/meteor-lights-up-the-skies-over-florida-with-bright-flash

2019-03-31 16:24:29Z
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NASA released a stunning photo showing two galaxies colliding - Business Insider

The two galaxies that form NGC 6052 are now so close that the boundaries are no longer clear.ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Adamo et al.

• Originally discovered in 1784, NGC 6052 was first thought to be one galaxy with an unusual shape.
• Scientists eventually discovered that it was, in fact, two galaxies in the process of colliding.
• Having previously been observed by the Hubble telescope in 2015, NASA recently released a stunning image of the galaxies in even closer detail.

First discovered in 1784 by William Herschel, NGC 6052 was originally thought to be a singular galaxy that simply had an odd shape.

However, scientists eventually figured out that the "oddly shaped galaxy" 230 million light-years away was, in fact, two galaxies in the process of colliding.

Having previously been observed by the Hubble telescope with an older camera in 2015, NASA recently released a stunning image of the galaxies in even better detail.

This object was previously observed by Hubble with its old Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) in 2015.ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

The two galaxies that form NGC 6052 are now so close that the boundaries are no longer clear and the original galaxies are losing their shape at a quickening pace.

Read more: Astronomers have discovered hundreds of thousands of new galaxies in a tiny section of the universe

"Eventually, this new galaxy will settle down into a stable shape, which may not resemble either of the two original galaxies," explained the European Space Agency. A complete fusion would throw the stars out of their original orbits and take new places.

According to NASA, as well as the union of the two galaxies being beautiful and fascinating, it's also very rare due to the fact that galaxies are mostly comprised of empty space.

In about four billion years the Milky Way and Andromeda are to collide and join to form one single galaxy. For now, however, the scientists are still researching NGC 6052.

Den Originalartikel gibt es auf Business Insider Deutschland. This post originally appeared on Business Insider Deutschland and has been translated from German. Copyright 2019. Und ihr könnt Business Insider Deutschland auf Twitter folgen.

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2019-03-31 11:09:19Z
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Dinosaur graveyard ‘left by asteroid which smashed into Earth 66 million years ago’ found by scientists in US - The Sun

SCIENTISTS have uncovered a dinosaur graveyard formed by the immediate fallout of the asteroid impact that hit Earth 66 million years ago - wiping out the giants.

Digs at a site called Tanis in North Dakota reveal fossils that were sprayed with scorching shards which fell from the sky during the extinction event.

Robert DePalma/ Berkeley University

How the aftermath of the asteroid impact could have looked

The deposits show evidence also of having been swamped with water - the consequence of the colossal Tsunami-style sea surge that was generated by the deadly impact.

Experts say the new find may be the best evidence yet that the massive meteor set off the sequence of events that led to the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, reports Berkeley News.

The results of the excavations are now to be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“A tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures was all packed into this layer by the inland-directed surge,” said Robert DePalma, from the University of Kansas.

"A tsunami would have taken at least 17 or more hours to reach the site from the crater, but seismic waves - and a subsequent surge - would have reached it in tens of minutes."

Besides fish the 'graveyard'  also contains evidence of dinosaurs, mammals and sea reptiles killed in the aftermath of the asteroid’s impact.

Among the amazing remnants were reported to be the remains of a Triceratops and a duck-billed hadrosaur.

The Chicxulub impact, caused by an eight-mile wide object smashing into the Gulf of Mexico, is thought to have triggered the extinction of 75 per cent of animal and plant life on Earth.

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Researchers were able to date the site’s fish skeletons and amber from tree sap to the point around 66m years ago when the giant space rock struck.

The fish were found with the impact-induced debris embedded in their gills which means they would have breathed in the fragments that filled the water around them.

The scientists have spent the past six years building a picture of how the beasts came to die so quickly after the initial impact.

Robert DePalma/ Berkeley University

A perfectly-preserved fish tail from the Hell Creek Formation, in North Dakota

AFP or licensors

Robert DePalma and field assistant Kylie Ruble excavate fossil carcasses at the site in North Dakota

Getty - Contributor

Dinosaurs 'thrived' before a mass extinction event wiped them out, experts say

Robert DePalma/ Berkeley University

The site appears to date to the day 66m years ago when an asteroid hit Earth

Baby T-rex revealed as 'adorable and fluffy' in stunning 3D video remake of deadly dinosaur

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2019-03-31 00:47:49Z
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Fossil Motherlode Reveals The Aftermath Of The Asteroid Impact That Wiped Out The Dinosaurs - Forbes

Scientists have uncovered the fossil motherlode – an incredible mash-up of fish, animals and plant life that was flash-preserved in the moments after the asteroid impact that probably killed the dinosaurs.

At a site called Tanis in North Dakota’s Hell Creek Formation, a team of palaeontologists from the University of Kansas unearthed the remains, so finely preserved that the gills of the fishes still contain debris that they breathed right before they died.

“We’ve understood that bad things happened right after the impact, but nobody’s found this kind of smoking-gun evidence,” said co-author David Burnham, preparator of vertebrate paleontology at the KU Biodiversity Institute, in a statement. “People have said, ‘We get that this blast killed the dinosaurs, but why don’t we have dead bodies everywhere?’ Well, now we have bodies. They’re not dinosaurs, but I think those will eventually be found, too.”

Illustration of a ten-kilometre-wide asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere as dinosaurs, including T. rex, look on. (Credit: Getty)

Getty

The massive Chicxulub impact – the most cataclysmic event known to have befallen life on Earth – is widely held responsible for the end of the dinosaurs. This single event toppled the prehistoric lizards from the top of the food chain and allowed mammals to inherit the Earth.

“It’s difficult not to get choked up and passionate about this topic,” said lead author Robert DePalma, a KU doctoral student in geology who works in the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum. “We look at moment-by-moment records of one of the most notable impact events in Earth’s history. No other site has a record quite like that. And this particular event is tied directly to all of us — to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet. Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs.”

Of course, not only dinosaurs were hit by this awesome event, a plethora of animals were wiped out. The fossil find by the KU palaeontologists shows a snapshot of this vibrant ecosystem.

“A tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures was all packed into this layer by the inland-directed surge,” said DePalma.

“Timing of the incoming ejecta spherules matched the calculated arrival times of seismic waves from the impact, suggesting that the impact could very well have triggered the surge.”

This wasn’t a tsunami that arrived after the impact – but a seismic surge that pushed the waters into chaos.

“A tsunami would have taken at least 17 or more hours to reach the site from the crater, but seismic waves - and a subsequent surge - would have reached it in tens of minutes,” said DePalma.

Just before the surge arrived, the animals in the area had already breathed in the first clouds of dust, ash and debris thrown up by the incredible impact.

“The fish were buried quickly, but not so quickly they didn’t have time to breathe the ejecta that was raining down to the river,” said Burnham.

“These fish weren’t bottom feeders, they breathed these in while swimming in the water column. We’re finding little pieces of ejecta in the gill rakers of these fish, the bony supports for the gills. We don’t know if some were killed by breathing this ejecta, too.”

Unlike most fossilisation, these remains are preserved in three dimensions, a catalogue of many hundreds of ancient fish that show the biodiversity of the region.

“The sedimentation happened so quickly everything is preserved in three dimensions — they’re not crushed,” Burnham said. “It’s like an avalanche that collapses almost like a liquid, then sets like concrete. They were killed pretty suddenly because of the violence of that water. We have one fish that hit a tree and was broken in half.”

The fossil find has not only uncovered new species and given researchers some of their best specimens of known ancient fish, but also offers new opportunities to learn about cataclysmic events like this one.

"As human beings, we descended from a lineage that literally survived in the ashes of what was once the glorious kingdom of the dinosaurs. And we’re the only species on the planet that has ever been capable of learning from such an event to the benefit of ourselves and every other organism in our world,” said DePalma.

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2019-03-30 20:15:00Z
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Fossil 'mother lode' records Earth-shaking asteroid's impact: study - Yahoo News

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This handout shows a tangled mass of articulated fish fossils uncovered in North Dakota at a site believed to date to the day 66 million years ago when an asteroid sruck Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet

This handout shows a tangled mass of articulated fish fossils uncovered in North Dakota at a site believed to date to the day 66 million years ago when an asteroid sruck Earth, killing nearly all life on the planet. (AFP Photo/Robert DePalma)

Washington (AFP) - Scientists in the US say they have discovered the fossilized remains of a mass of creatures that died minutes after a huge asteroid slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, sealing the fate of the dinosaurs.

In a paper to be published Monday, a team of paleontologists headquartered at the University of Kansas say they found a "mother lode of exquisitely preserved animal and fish fossils" in what is now North Dakota.

The asteroid's impact in what is now Mexico was the most cataclysmic event ever known to befall Earth, eradicating 75 percent of the planet's animal and plant species, extinguishing the dinosaurs and paving the way for the rise of humans.

Researchers believe the impact set off fast-moving, seismic surges that triggered a sudden, massive torrent of water and debris from an arm of an inland sea known as the Western Interior Seaway.

At the Tanis site in North Dakota's Hell Creek Formation, the surge left "a tangled mass of freshwater fish, terrestrial vertebrates, trees, branches, logs, marine ammonites and other marine creatures," according to Robert DePalma, the report's lead author.

Some of the fish fossils were found to have inhaled "ejecta" associated with the Chicxulub event, suggesting seismic surges reached North Dakota within "tens of minutes," he said.

"The sedimentation happened so quickly everything is preserved in three dimensions -- they're not crushed," said co-author David Burnham.

"It's like an avalanche that collapses almost like a liquid, then sets like concrete. They were killed pretty suddenly because of the violence of that water. We have one fish that hit a tree and was broken in half."

The fossils at Tanis include what were believed to be several newly identified fish species, and others that were "the best examples of their kind," said DePalma, a graduate student and curator of the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Florida.

"We look at moment-by-moment records of one of the most notable impact events in Earth's history. No other site has a record quite like that," he said.

"And this particular event is tied directly to all of us -- to every mammal on Earth, in fact. Because this is essentially where we inherited the planet. Nothing was the same after that impact. It became a planet of mammals rather than a planet of dinosaurs."

The paper is to be published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences.

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2019-03-30 18:29:00Z
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Catastrophic New Details From The 'Day The Dinosaurs Died' Uncovered in Fossils - ScienceAlert

Sixty-six million years ago, a massive asteroid crashed into a shallow sea near Mexico. The impact carved out a 90-mile-wide crater and flung mountains of earth into space. Earthbound debris fell to the planet in droplets of molten rock and glass.

Ancient fish caught glass blobs in their gills as they swam, gape-mouthed, beneath the strange rain. Large, sloshing waves threw animals onto dry land, then more waves buried them in silt.

Scientists working in North Dakota recently dug up fossils of these fish: They died within the first minutes or hours after the asteroid hit, according to a paper published Friday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a discovery that has sparked tremendous excitement among paleontologists.

"You're going back to the day that the dinosaurs died," said Timothy Bralower, a Pennsylvania State University paleoceanographer who is studying the impact crater and was not involved with this work.

"That's what this is. This is the day the dinosaurs died."

About 3 in 4 species perished in what is called the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, also known as the K-Pg event or K-T extinction. The killer asteroid most famously claimed the dinosaurs.

But the T. rex and the triceratops were joined by hordes of other living things. Freshwater and marine creatures were victims, as were plants and microorganisms, including 93 percent of plankton. (A lone branch of dinosaurs, the birds, lives on.)

Four decades of research buttresses the asteroid extinction theory, widely embraced as the most plausible explanation for the disappearance of dinosaurs.

In the late 1970s, Luis and Walter Alvarez, a father-son scientist duo at the University of California at Berkeley, examined an unusual geologic layer between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods. The boundary was full of the element iridium, which is rare in Earth's crust but not in asteroids. Walter Alvarez is one of the authors of the new study.

The Hell Creek fossils represent "the first mass death assemblage of large organisms anyone has found" that sits at the K-Pg boundary, study author Robert DePalma said in a statement.

DePalma, a doctoral student at the University of Kansas, began excavating the site at North Dakota's Hell Creek formation in 2013. Since then, DePalma and other paleontologists have found heaps of fossilized sturgeon and paddlefish with glass spheres still in their gills.

They found squidlike animals called ammonites, shark teeth and the remains of predatory aquatic lizards called mosasaurs. They found dead mammals, insects, trees and a triceratops. They found foot-long fossil feathers, dinosaur tracks and prehistoric mammal burrows. They found fossilized tree gunk called amber that had captured the glass spheres, too.

The site has "all the trademark signals from the Chicxulub impact," Bralower said, including the glass beads and lots of iridium. In the geologic layer just above the fossil deposit, ferns dominate, the signs of a recovering ecosystem. "It's spellbinding," he said.

In the early 1990s, researchers found the scar left by the asteroid — a crater in the Yucatan Peninsula. The impact was named after the nearby Mexican town of Chicxulub. Suggested "kill mechanisms" for the Chicxulub impact abound: It may have poisoned the planet with heavy metals, turned the ocean to acid, shrouded Earth in darkness or ignited global firestorms. Its punch may have triggered volcanoes that spewedlike shaken soda cans.

Hell Creek is more than 2,000 miles from the Chicxulub crater. But a hail of glass beads, called tektites, rained there within 15 minutes of the impact, said study author Jan Smit, a paleontologist at Vrije University in Amsterdam who also was an early discoverer of iridium at the K-Pg boundary.

The fish, pressed in the mud like flowers in a diary, are remarkably well-preserved. "It's the equivalent of finding people in life positions buried by ash after Pompeii," Bralower said.

At the time of the dinosaurs, the Hell Creek site was a river valley. The river fed into an inland sea that connected the Arctic Ocean to a prehistoric Gulf of Mexico. After the asteroid struck, seismic waves from a magnitude 10 to 11 earthquake rippled through this sea, according to the study authors.

This caused not a tsunami but what's known as seiche waves, the back-and-forth sloshes sometimes seen in miniature in a bathtub. These can be symptoms of very distant tremors — such as the seiche waves that churned in Norwegian fjords in 2011 after the giant Tohoku earthquake near Japan.

Seiche waves from the inland sea reached 30 feet, drowning the river valley in a pulse of water, gravel and sand. The rain of rocks and glass followed. The tektites dug "small funnels in the sediment laid down by the seiche," Smit said, "so you know for sure they are coming down when the waves are still running upriver."

This is preservation, in other words, of a fresh hell.

2019 © The Washington Post

This article was originally published by The Washington Post.

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2019-03-30 10:26:54Z
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Snapshot of extinction: Fossils show day of killer asteroid - Salt Lake Tribune

Washington • New research released Friday captures a fossilized snapshot of the day nearly 66 million years ago when an asteroid smacked Earth, fire rained from the sky and the ground shook far worse than any modern earthquake.

The researchers say they found evidence in North Dakota of the asteroid hit in Mexico, including fish with hot glass in their gills from flaming debris that showered back down on Earth. They also reported the discovery of charred trees, evidence of an inland tsunami and melted amber.

Separately, University of Amsterdam's Jan Smit disclosed that he and his colleagues even found dinosaur footsteps from just before their demise.

Smit said the footprints — one from a plant-eating hadrosaur and the other of a meat eater, maybe a small Tyrannosaurus Rex — is "definite proof that the dinosaurs were alive and kicking at the time of impact ... They were running around, chasing each other" when they were swamped.

"This is the death blow preserved at one particular site. This is just spectacular," said Purdue University geophysicist and impact expert Jay Melosh, who wasn't part of the research but edited the paper released Friday by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .

Melosh called it the field's "discovery of the century." But other experts said that while some of the work is fascinating, they have some serious concerns about the research, including the lack of access to this specific Hell Creek Formation fossil site for outside scientists. Hell Creek — which spans Montana, both Dakotas and Wyoming — is a fossil treasure trove that includes numerous types of dinosaurs, mammals, reptiles and fish trapped in clay and stone from 65 to 70 million years ago.

Kirk Johnson , director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History who also has studied the Hell Creek area for 38 years, said that the work on the fish, the glass and trees "demonstrates some of the details of what happened on THE DAY. That's all quite interesting and very valid stuff." But Johnson said that because there is restricted access to the site, other scientists can't confirm the research. Smit said the restrictions were to protect the site from poachers.

Johnson also raised concerns about claims made by the main author, Robert DePalma, a University of Kansas doctoral student, that appeared in a New Yorker magazine article published Friday but not in the scientific paper. DePalma did not return an email or phone message seeking comment.

For decades, the massive asteroid crash that caused the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula has been considered the likely cause of the mass extinction often called the "KT boundary" for the division between two geologic time periods. But some scientists have insisted that massive volcanic activity played a role. Johnson and Melosh said this helps prove the asteroid crash case.

There were only a few dinosaur fossils from that time, but the footsteps are most convincing, Smit said.

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There was more than dinosaurs, he said. The site includes ant nests, wasp nests, fragile preserved leaves and fish that were caught in the act of dying. He said that soon after fish die they get swollen bellies and these fossils didn't show swelling.

The researchers said the inland tsunami points to a massive earthquake generated by the asteroid crash, somewhere between a magnitude 10 and 11. That's more than 350 times stronger than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Purdue's Melosh said as he read the study, he kept saying "wow, wow, what a discovery."

The details coming out of this are "mind-blowing," he said.

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https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2019/03/30/snapshot-extinction/

2019-03-30 05:17:26Z
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Scientists Find Fossilized Fish That May Have Been Blasted by Debris From Asteroid That Ended the Dinosaur Age - Gizmodo

Plaster cast of a Tanis deposit fossil showing a freshwater fish (dark brown) next to a marine ammonite (iridescence at top left).

Photo: DePalma et al (PNAS 2019)

At one of the most important ancient graveyards on Earth in North Dakota, paleontologists unearthed the fossilized remains of fish seemingly killed by the effects of the asteroid that ended the Cretaceous.

We know that a large asteroid struck the Earth 66 million years ago, and around the same time, the dinosaurs went extinct. We’re not completely sure whether the asteroid was solely responsible for the mass extinction, but you might ask, “Shouldn’t we see remnants of animals killed by the asteroid’s effects?” Well, now we have found some.

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“This is the last day of the Cretaceous,” David Burnham, professor in the Department of Geology at the University of Kansas and one of the study’s authors, told Gizmodo.

When a giant meteorite strikes, you’d expect chaotic effects, like rocks altered by the impact’s high pressures and temperatures, enormous earthquakes, and tsunamis. But Earth’s rocks don’t directly preserve single days of the planet’s several billion-year-old history. You’ve got to get creative when it comes to teasing apart the geologic record. For example, around the world, layers of rock 66 million years old seem to contain excess iridium, presumably deposited by the Chicxulub impactor that struck near what is today the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Then there are tektites, small, glassy spheres of compressed and heated rock. Theoretically, there should also be fossilized evidence of animals killed by the asteroid’s effects.

The Tanis formation

Screenshot: DePalma et al (PNAS)

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This is what makes the new research, led by Robert DePalma at the University of Kansas, so exciting—the description of a pair of sediment laters at the Tanis site of the The Hell Creek Formation in southwestern North Dakota. Both layers contain an excess of iridium, but only the lower level contains glass pieces that seemed to have been deposited from an inland-moving force. They take this to mean that they’re observing two events: The upper layer is the settling dust from after the impact. The lower is a large deposit of sediment from the hours following the impact.

But if the rocks alone don’t convince you, perhaps the fossils in the event deposit will. A large swath of ocean traveled up the interior of the United States during the Cretaceous, terminating not far from the Tanis region. But the rocks at Tanis preserve a mixture of both freshwater fish, like paddlefish and sturgeon, and marine mollusks called ammonites—implying that around this time, the ocean had mixed with freshwater rivers. And lodged inside the fossilized paddlefish’s gills were more of the glass spherules. It appeared that wave containing shocked glass from the impact over 3,050 kilometers (1,895 miles) away had inundated the area, and in their dying breaths, the fish had inhaled some of them.

X-ray image showing spherules embedded in a paddlefish gill.

Image: DePalma et al (PNAS)

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Other researchers were impressed by the work. “When I first read it, I kept saying ‘wow, wow, wow,’” H. Jay Melosh, distinguished professor of Earth, atmospheric, and planetary science at Purdue University, told Gizmodo. “I think this is one of the most spectacular paleontological discoveries of the century. It’s a snapshot of the moment at which major deaths were occurring right after the impact.”

The researchers point out that there are other scenarios that might have brought the glass particles up to Tanis. Maybe there were meteorological events like gale-force winds, or landslides, the authors write in the paper, published in PNAS.

But the observations have far-reaching implications. The authors write:

“Observations at Tanis expand our knowledge of the Chicxulub impact’s damaging effects and their far-reaching scope. The highly probable link between impact-induced seismic shaking and the onshore inundation surge at Tanis reveals an important additional mechanism by which the Chicxulub impact could have caused catastrophic conditions in the Western Interior, and possibly worldwide, far from the impact site.

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It’s amazing to imagine how abruptly life on Earth changed in the hours and days after the Chicxulub asteroid hit. And it’s equally amazing that we could find direct evidence from that time locked away in the remains of the creatures who experienced it.

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2019-03-29 18:20:00Z
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NASA wants to pay you almost $19,000 to lie in bed for 2 months - KMBC Kansas City

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1. NASA wants to pay you almost $19,000 to lie in bed for 2 months  KMBC Kansas City
2. NASA is paying 24 people $19G to stay in bed  Fox News
3. Space scientists want to pay you almost $19,000 to lie in bed for 2 months  CNN
4. German space scientists will pay you €16,500 to lie in bed for 60 days  DW (English)
5. NASA is paying 24 people almost $19K to stay in bed  SILive.com
6. View full coverage on Google News

https://www.kmbc.com/article/nasa-wants-to-pay-you-almost-dollar19000-to-lie-in-bed-for-2-months/26983501

2019-03-29 15:42:00Z
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'Ninja' kangaroo rats kick rattlesnakes in the head faster than... - Grand Forks Herald

A wide-eyed kangaroo rat sits hunched in darkness among sparse tufts of desert plant life. But the diminutive rodent isn't alone in the Arizona desert. Just inches away, a deadly sidewinder rattlesnake is lying in wait, looking for its next meal.

The wily predator rears back and lunges at its prey - a lightning-fast attack that for a number of other living creatures would probably mean certain death. But in less than a second, the snake is on the ground with nothing but dust in its jaws and the kangaroo rat is bounding away to freedom.

The rat's harrowing escape, however, isn't just luck, according to a pair of papers published this week by a team of researchers from San Diego State University, University of California at Riverside and University of California at Davis. The desert-dwelling critters commonly found in western North America have a rather impressive arsenal of evasive maneuvers, including, much to the shock of scientists, the ability to deliver punishing midair "ninja-style" kicks in a fraction of a second, according to a Wednesday news release.

For years, each time a kangaroo rat avoided becoming rattlesnake food, Grace Freymiller and Malachi Whitford, PhD students at San Diego State University who authored the papers, were left with the same question: What happened?

"You see a blur of motion and then the kangaroo rat is gone, and you have no clue," Whitford told The Washington Post. At most, each battle between snake and rat lasts about 700 milliseconds, or 0.7 seconds, he said.

The mystery deepened when it appeared that on some occasions the rats were getting bitten, but they weren't dying, Whitford said.

"It was kind of weird," he said. "We couldn't really tell what was happening, but we knew something strange was going on."

Using high-speed cameras, Freymiller and Whitford led a team of researchers to the desert outside of Yuma, Ariz., in search of answers. When they reviewed their footage in slow-motion, they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Freymiller told The Washington Post she had one thought: "Holy s---."

"It was just mind-boggling," Whitford said.

In footage Freymiller believes is the first of its kind, a kangaroo rat can clearly be seen leaping into the air and delivering a powerful double-footed kick to a rattlesnake's head. The video shows the snake flying through the air, its body smacking onto the ground as the rat disappears from view. Researchers uploaded clips of the acrobatic getaways to a YouTube channel aptly named "Ninja Rat," and by early Friday one video had amassed more than 92,000 views.

"It seemed crazy, Freymiller said. "It was all happening so quickly, we couldn't imagine they'd have enough time to actually execute a maneuver like that. They're so fast, it's amazing."

With attack times of less than 100 milliseconds, rattlesnakes are fast, but kangaroo rats are faster, researchers found after studying more than 30 interactions. On average, the rats had reaction times of around 70 milliseconds, with some starting to leap away within just 38 milliseconds of the snake striking, the release said.

"It's basically like reacting before you can even close your eyelid," Whitford told The Post, adding that it takes about 150 milliseconds for humans to blink.

Though several videos show the rats dodging snakes by launching themselves high in the air, they turn to kicking whenever they can't get away fast enough, Rulon Clark, an associate professor of biology at San Diego State University and a co-author on both research papers, said in the release.

The rats, Clark said, were able to escape "by reorienting themselves in midair and using their massive haunches and feet to kick the snakes away, ninja-style."

The kick, and how quickly it's inflicted, are critical to the rat's survival, Whitford told The Post.

"They're limiting the amount of time snakes have to actually inject venom," he said about the rats. "They're not getting a full dose of venom that's enough to actually incapacitate them in anyway."

Without venom, a rattlesnake bite, which is similar to a "tiny needle prick," is relatively harmless, he said. In one video, a snake appears to bite down on the kangaroo rat's furry body, but a swift kick to the head dislodges its fangs allowing the tiny martial artist to flee.

Beyond documenting the impressive fight skills, Whitford said researchers now believe the animals' self-defense tactics are far more complex than "random thrashing." He pointed to one instance in which a kangaroo rat flipped on its back to kick a snake instead of jumping. When the snake reeled back, the rat got back on its feet and leaped away to safety.

"The movements seem really purposeful and directed," he said. "It seems like it's actually processing information as to what the snake is doing, the best way to actually evade that attack and then initiating that response . . . To be able to process that kind of information in that time is just astounding."

On social media, the rats' masterful defense techniques were heralded as "epic."

But aside from creating "Ninja Rat" fans, Freymiller said she hopes the research will "get people to appreciate the environment around them more," especially deserts.

"We just want people to see that they're not necessarily lifeless barren habitats," she said. "They're worth protecting, they're worth appreciating. They're home to these amazing animals doing things beyond what we could ever imagine."

- - -

This article was written by Allyson Chiu, a reporter for The Washington Post.

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2019-03-29 14:44:58Z
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NASA is paying 24 people $19G to stay in bed - Fox News

(Credit: ESA)

NASA has created the perfect job for anyone who really enjoys staying in bed all day, as long as they don't mind continuing to do just that for 60 days without a break.

As UPI reports, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), in conjunction with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are undertaking an Artificial Gravity Bed Rest Study (AGBRESA).

The study hopes to figure out what effective countermeasures there are against bone and muscle atrophy when humans are placed in a weightless environment and how artificial gravity can have a positive impact. This is important for the astronauts who will eventually spend extended periods of time in space beyond the limited stays currently experienced aboard the International Space Station.

As part of the study, 12 male and 12 female volunteers will spend 60 days in bed in the :envihab facility at the DLR Institute of Aerospace Medicine in Cologne. Their full stay will actually be 89 days, with the remaining 19 days used as pre-test and recovery periods. In return for their time, each volunteer will receive $19,000 in compensation.

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While that may sound like easy money to make, the test is sure to be quite stressful and potentially unpleasant. As DLR explains, "All experiments, meals, and leisure pursuits will take place lying down during the bed-rest phase. The participants will be restricted in their movements, so that the strain on muscles, tendons and the skeletal system is reduced. The beds are angled downwards towards the head end by six degrees. This will simulate the displacement of bodily fluids experienced by astronauts in a microgravity environment."

According to Leticia Vega, Associate Chief Scientist for International Collaborations for NASA's Human Research Program, the restrictions placed on the volunteers produce effects that are "similar to what astronauts experience in space," which can then be combined with what's known from studying humans in the weightless environment aboard ISS.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.

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2019-03-29 13:37:33Z
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