T. Rex and the Crater of Doom

Rating:
Summary: I wish my science teacher had told me Science can be cool
Review: Alvarez has done what few grass roots scientists can, which is provide an intelligent and complete argument that is easily palatable by the layperson. All this and at the same time, probably do much to convince young people that science can be cool, fun, and fascinating.Admittedly the recent sexiness of the whole dinosaur epoch adds to the momentum of uncovering the answers to one of the gretatest bio-historical questions of all time. However the book has an enjoyable amount of internal momentum, which is not compromised by the occasional necessary tangential forays into scientific proof and annoying things like that.This is a must read for any inquiring mind of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries

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Summary: T-Rex and the K-T Event
Review: Alvarez mixes Scientific Method, paleontology, the difficulties in getting a new idea considered with an adventure story. Especially noteworthy is how Alvarez gives lots of credit to the people who contributed with advancing this theory. The reading level seems geared towards mid- to older teens. I hope to use this book in the Earth Science class I teach.

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Summary: It's a Smash
Review: Easier reading level than the Powell book, and more suitable for children and teens interested in the topic of the K-T impact extinction.

This title is more of a first person memoir of the development of the theory and not as detailed or as frank about the political aspects of the struggle as the Powell book. Dewey McLean, one of the proponents of a terrestrial, gradual, volcanic cause for the K-T extinction claimed that the elder Alvarez had threatened to ruin his career, and claimed a low level of debate and personal attacks. Even from the quotes here it appears that the late Luis Alvarez took a seemingly unscholarly approach toward those that didn't accept the impact scenario from the outset.

Longstanding objections to the impact extinction -- such as the Deccan Traps, which have been conclusively shown to be of the wrong date and have had little impact on the dinosaur populations nearest to it -- are examined, but see "Night Comes to the Cretaceous" by James Lawrence Powell for a better and more adult oriented book on the same topic and a more detailed examination.

See also "Rain of Iron and Ice" by John S. Lewis.

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Summary: Fascinating story of a great scientific discovery
Review: It's interesting to see that this book is now being used as a text in high school and even junior high school science classes. I had a great laugh from the reaction of a young reader who wrote that it was "boring" and that "Innocent eight graders shouldn't have to read this stuff"!

Ah, yes. Innocence. But 14-year-olds aside, this is a fascinating and delightful story of scientific discovery and triumph second to none. It can be compared to James D. Watson's The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA, both in terms of the importance of the discovery and for bringing to the reader some of the excitement and adventure of the quest. It is not, however, as the title might imply, the reading equivalent of watching a Stephen Spielberg movie! And perhaps we can be thankful for that.

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom is the story of one of the great scientific discoveries of the twentieth century. Prior to Alvarez's work, it was not known what had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. Volcanism, disease, climate change, etc., were put forward as possibilities. But in1970 Alvarez began to believe that a large meteor or a comet had struck the earth with enormous force causing the extinctions. But how to prove it? At first it wasn't even imagined how a meteor could bring about such a catastrophe; but gradually it was seen that the debris thrown into the atmosphere by the force of impact would encircle the earth and block out the rays of the sun for months or even years at a time, thereby killing off plants both on the land and in the sea, thereby collapsing the food chain and starving the dinosaurs and most other creatures.

This was the breakthrough idea, and an exciting idea it was. Of course there was great resistance, as there always is in science when established opinions are threatened, and Alvarez and his team of scientists had to fight mightily against the orthodoxy of uniformitarianism which had held sway in geology and paleontology since the time of Charles Lyell. It wasn't until twelve years later in 1992 that Alvarez's theory finally found general acceptance in the scientific community.

One of Alvarez's purposes in this book is to show a general readership how scientific discoveries are made and confirmed. His tone is generous and he goes out of his way (unlike Watson in The Double Helix) to give credit to everyone involved. He makes it clear that the work was a shared enterprise. One thing that stood out in my mind was the central contribution from Alverez's father, Luis, a physicist who unfortunately died before the theory could be confirmed.

Alvarez does however allow himself an occasional sarcasm vis-a-vis the old order. Characterizing the "conventional geologic opinion" on the formation of craters like the Meteor Crater in Arizona as due to "mysterious explosions that occurred at random times and places for no evident reason," he appends this observation: "In retrospect this causeless mechanism...is indistinguishable from magic, but at the time many geologists considered it preferable to catastrophic impacts." (p 76)

Science is especially subject to the braking effect of established opinion because it is extremely difficult for anybody to allow that the established beliefs of their entire professional career can suddenly be overturned. All your life you believed one thing and one day you wake up and some whippersnapper has overturned the entire edifice! That is hard to take, and so entrenched opinion wars against new discovery. But that is as it should be since extraordinary claims do indeed require extraordinary proof.

Therefore, just as "the course of true love never did run smooth" (Shakespeare), so it is with science. Alvarez recounts an early misdirection in the quest when it was thought that they had found plutonium-244 in the KT boundary clay, possibly indicating a nearby supernova explosion 65 million years ago. He and Frank Asaro took their discovery to Earl Hyde, a nuclear chemist who listened patiently to the details and then said, "Do it all over again." This was very good advice because when they did it all over again they found they had erred: there was no plutonium-244 in the clay samples! (p. 74)

After reading this book we are left with an intriguing question: what was the role of volcanism, not only in the KT extinction but in the Permian-Triassic as well? Alvarez hints that there must be more than coincidence involved in the fact that during both extinctions there is indisputable evidence of vast lava flows. Does a truly monstrous impact somehow trigger volcanic eruptions? An "intriguing mystery" is what Alvarez calls it. (pp. 143-144)

This book should be read in conjunction with David M. Raup's The Nemesis Affair: A Story of the Death of Dinosaurs and the Ways of Science which covers some of the same ground (especially the fight against established opinion) while claiming a 26-million year periodicity for impact extinctions caused by Oort Cloud perturbations from a hypothetical companion star, dubbed "Nemesis."

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Summary: Walter Alvarez is my professor at UC Berkeley :)
Review: Not only does Walter's writing 'rock', he is one amazing teacher. I have him as a professor at UC Berkeley for one of my earth science classes. I highly recommend his books and if he has a seminar, you should definitely attend.

Rating:
Summary: Walter Alvarez is my professor at UC Berkeley :)
Review: Not only does Walter's writing 'rock', he is one amazing teacher. I have him as a professor at UC Berkeley for one of my earth science classes. I highly recommend his books and if he has a seminar, you should definitely attend.

Rating:
Summary: T. Rex: KT boundary once again
Review: Probably the most investigated mass extinction of the five major events known to have occurred has been the KT boundary event. This is probably because the dinosaur, especially T. Rex--as notice how much the dino named Sue fetched at auction--has captured the popular imagination more than any other animal. It was also the demise of these animals that openned up a world of opportunity for mammals, among which our own species is numbered. We therefore have a vested interest in, a sense of ownership of that catastrophic event as of no other. The notion of an astroid impact as the bringer of the end to the "terrible lizards" is also almost Biblical in proportion. It grabs the imagination. Certainly it has grabbed the media, as several TV programs and at least two movies about astroid impacts have been produced since the introduction of the theory advanced by the Alvarez, father and son. This book is a well written account by Walter Alvarez of the discovery of the clues to that event, of the gradual developement of the theory by many contributors, and of the defense of the theory before the scientific community. In fact the book is a good demonstration of the rigour with which new theories are challenged and defended and of the scientific process itself. It is also a landmark episode of the multidisciplinary approach to research and the growing dialogue between scientists from different fields. (For an opposing theory, also in itself compelling, see Evolution Catastrophies by Courtillot, or click on my name for my review of it. For a more thorough account of the prevailing theories of the KT and other extinctions see End of the Dinosaurs by Frankel or the review of it under my name).

Rating:
Summary: T. Rex: KT boundary once again
Review: Probably the most investigated mass extinction of the five major events known to have occurred has been the KT boundary event. This is probably because the dinosaur, especially T. Rex--as notice how much the dino named Sue fetched at auction--has captured the popular imagination more than any other animal. It was also the demise of these animals that openned up a world of opportunity for mammals, among which our own species is numbered. We therefore have a vested interest in, a sense of ownership of that catastrophic event as of no other. The notion of an astroid impact as the bringer of the end to the "terrible lizards" is also almost Biblical in proportion. It grabs the imagination. Certainly it has grabbed the media, as several TV programs and at least two movies about astroid impacts have been produced since the introduction of the theory advanced by the Alvarez, father and son. This book is a well written account by Walter Alvarez of the discovery of the clues to that event, of the gradual developement of the theory by many contributors, and of the defense of the theory before the scientific community. In fact the book is a good demonstration of the rigour with which new theories are challenged and defended and of the scientific process itself. It is also a landmark episode of the multidisciplinary approach to research and the growing dialogue between scientists from different fields. (For an opposing theory, also in itself compelling, see Evolution Catastrophies by Courtillot, or click on my name for my review of it. For a more thorough account of the prevailing theories of the KT and other extinctions see End of the Dinosaurs by Frankel or the review of it under my name).

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Summary: T.rex and the Crater of Doom
Review: T.rex and the Crate of Doom written by Waler Alvarez is a book about what occured around 65 million years ago on earth. Yes, the Chicxulub crater off the North coast of the Yucatan peninsula.

As it seems, the disciplines of geology and paleontology are the are the Earth historians. Like you or I reading a paper for the news, geologists and paleontologists read the fossil recond in the rocks. By observing, measuring, and interpreting the information held fast through the eons of time, the earth's history can been seen and understood.

There are two camps in these disciplins the camp of gradualism where everything takes times... sometimes an enormous length of time, then there are those of the camp catastrophism, something awful happen like a comet of meteor crashing into the earth. Well, this book falls mainly into the latter camp as the work on the K-T layer (Cretaecous-Tertiary) Iridium was found and the cause soon revealed that it came from an extraterrestrial source.

To be realistic, one must use both camps to come up with the true answer.

This book has seven chapters: Armageddon, ExLibro Lapidum Historia Mundi, Gradualist versus Catastrophist,
Iridum, The Search for the Impact Site, The Crater of Doom, and The World after Chicxulub. Each of these chapters bring the read more information on how science, if applied correctly can render an answer to some nagging questions.

This book tell about what happens when a meteor the size of Mt. Everest crashes into the earth and the consequenses that follow. As the author states, "The hugh cloud of vaporized rock generated at ground zero was driven outward by its own heat and pressure in a colossal fireball." Mexican geologists found the Chicxulub crater back in the 1950's, but the general knowledge of Chicxulub didn't become common knowledge until 1991. As more and more evidence becames available, the extinction of the mosters of the Mesozoic is starting to favor the catastrophist theory... but we can only guess, but an intelligent guess is better than not knowing.

This book was a fast read and the narrative flowed freely just like reading a detective story and all of the pieces of the mystery come together. This book has a little chemistry and physics in it so I believe that this show be read by age 16 and up. All in all, the is an excellent book and a fascinating story unfolds with some of the best firsthand paleontological science unraveling the mystries of that great extinction 65 millions years ago.

Nevertheless, this is a chilling reminder of the fragility of the biosphere, which is under a constant threat from asteroids, meteorites, bolides and comets.

Rating:
Summary: BORING!!
Review: The title of this book says everything you need to know about its literary style. It's a fun romp through one of the leading scientific controversies in modern geology and paleontology, told by one of the central figures. It is not a scientific treatise, but a book of scientific history, detailing the process by which geochemical "detectives" sorted through Nature's red herrings in the attempt to track down the object that murdered the dinosaurs. It's also a case study in the philosophical debate between catastrophe theories and gradualism in a science so marked by its long debate with certain groups of religious conservatives that it developed a reflexive antagonism to any suggestion that some events might not have taken place over "geologic" time scales. A world-altering meteor impact was not something the gradualists wanted to discover.

Alvarez clearly believes that the discovery of a 65-million-year-old impact crater on Mexico's Gulf Coast has pretty much resolved the question of what killed the dinos, and he's written his book to an audience of like-minded folk. If you're on the fence, the book might convince you. If you're in the opposing camp, it won't-nor is that the book's purpose. Rather, Alvarez is out to tell a good story of the progress of science. If, along the way, he teaches a bit of geology and convinces a few readers that geochemistry and geophysics are "cool," so much the better. Give this book to a high school kid with an interest in science-but read it yourself, first.