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21. TAKE YOUR ASTEROID AND SHOVE IT (Sept. 2002)
Every now and then you will read that a giant asteroid wiped out
the dinosaurs, and this nonsense has actually come to be accepted as proven,
like gravity.
The theory is, in fact, scientific swill, a work of amateurs that's
been taken up by many professionals and almost all the media.
The main amateurs? Walter Alvarez, a geologist, and his father Luis, a
famous physicist. In other words, both knew as much about dinosaurs as Phil
Rizzuto or your barber.
A few quick points:
The dinosaurs had largely become extinct millions of years before the
alleged asteroid arrived. There are very few dinosaur fossils from that time,
limited to a handful of species, mostly in the Western U.S. On most continents
the dinosaurs had disappeared millions of years earlier.
The alleged asteroid supposedly created a "nuclear winter" that the
dinosaurs couldn't handle. Now there's no proof of a "nuclear winter" around
that time. But--- let's say there was one. We're supposed to believe the
terrible cold did in the dinosaurs, who we know lived in both the arctic and
antarctic and were thus adapted to up to 6 months of darkness. Meanwhile, purely
warmth-loving creatures like the crocodiles, lizards, turtles, snakes, frogs and
salamanders waltzed through the alleged crisis without any problem. So did the
birds, mammals, insects, plants and fish.
The truth is the dinosaurs were on their way out long before the Big
Rock plotzed on them. A huge number of factors did them in: the violent
volcanoes of the period, lowering of sea levels and the disappearance of seas,
the cooling of temperatures, competition from better-adapted mammals, and other
factors. At most, if there was an asteroid, it simply administered the final
coup to a handful of dinosaurs on their last legs.
Why has such a stupid and simple theory triumphed? That's your answer.
What else could the media love?
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