GEOSC 10 - PRACTICE QUIZ #11

The picture above shows:

A right-side-up dinosaur track. Feedback: This is a dinosaur track, from dinosaur ridge, and the dinosaur stomped down into the mud, so the track is right-side-up.

What cause probably was not important in contributing to extinction of most species on Earth, including the dinosaurs, in a very short interval of time at the end of the Mesozoic Era?

Cold from the change in Earth's orbit caused when the meteorite shoved the planet farther from the sun. Feedback: Robert Frost once wrote "Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice". For the dinosaurs, both were probably true, with acid thrown in. But the meteorite was not nearly big enough to change the planet's orbit noticeably. Frost went on "From what I've tasted of desire, I hold with those who favor fire, But if it had to perish twice, I think that for destruction ice, Is also great, and would suffice."

Extinction of existing species:

Occurred at a low level throughout geologic history, punctuated by mass extinctions when many types were killed over very short times. Feedback: Extinction has happened slowly throughout geologic history, but with a few dramatic, catastrophic mass extinctions. We may be causing the latest of those mass extinctions.

Considering long-term averages, and assuming that we don't deploy space-based defenses against incoming meteorites, a reasonable estimate of the chance of an average U.S. citizen being killed by the effects of a meteorite or comet impact is that this risk is about the same as the chance of being killed by:

Crash of a commercial airplane. Feedback: Nobody that we know eats Pepsi cans, and while there are still meteorites in the solar system that can hit and kill, there are no dinosaurs left except on "The Flintstones". A reputable study found that a meteorite impact might not occur for millions of years (or might occur next year...) but then might kill billions of people; plane crashes usually kill a few to a few hundred each year. Add up the deaths over a sufficiently long time, and plane crashes and meteorite impacts likely are similarly dangerous. But car crashes, smoking, and being fat and lazy are way more dangerous to us.

Examine the two pictures above, labeled I and II. They are from the same sediment core collected in sea-floor muds from beneath the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina. (The pictures are scanning electron micrographs by Brian Huber of the Smithsonian Institution, and the scale is the same on both, as shown at the bottom of each.) One picture shows a sample from just below the unique layer marking the extinction that killed the dinosaurs, and the other picture shows a sample from just above that unique layer. Which is which?

I is from below the unique layer, and II is from above the unique layer. Feedback: Before the impact, biodiversity was high, as shown in I, which includes fossils from below the unique layer and thus deposited before the meteorite hit. After the impact, most of the living types were killed, giving rise to the limited diversity seen in II from above the unique layer after the impact.