WEBVTT FILE 1 00:00:07.140 --> 00:00:09.442 Hello and welcome to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 2 00:00:09.676 --> 00:00:12.345 My name is Michelle Thaler, and we have a wonderful honor 3 00:00:12.345 --> 00:00:14.447 today of presenting a scientific colloquium 4 00:00:14.447 --> 00:00:15.982 about some amazing new results 5 00:00:15.982 --> 00:00:17.951 having to do with the end of the dinosaurs. 6 00:00:17.951 --> 00:00:19.753 This is something where space science 7 00:00:19.753 --> 00:00:21.321 and earth science come together 8 00:00:21.321 --> 00:00:23.857 and shows you how very much enmeshed 9 00:00:23.857 --> 00:00:25.759 all of these different types of study are. 10 00:00:25.759 --> 00:00:26.760 So we're honored today 11 00:00:26.760 --> 00:00:28.962 to have Robert DePalma talking to us, 12 00:00:28.962 --> 00:00:30.497 and he'll be giving this colloquium. 13 00:00:30.497 --> 00:00:31.364 Now, Robert, 14 00:00:31.364 --> 00:00:32.799 it turns out, is a doctoral 15 00:00:32.799 --> 00:00:34.634 candidate will be very soon getting a doctorate, 16 00:00:34.634 --> 00:00:36.636 I hope, in there for the University of Manchester. 17 00:00:36.636 --> 00:00:37.871 Is that is that correct, Robert? 18 00:00:37.871 --> 00:00:39.272 Yes. Michele, thank you so much. 19 00:00:39.272 --> 00:00:40.774 It's an honor to be here today. 20 00:00:40.774 --> 00:00:42.242 I will be getting a doctorate very soon 21 00:00:42.242 --> 00:00:43.710 from University of Manchester. 22 00:00:43.710 --> 00:00:45.111 And I'm on the faculty at University 23 00:00:45.111 --> 00:00:47.113 at Florida Atlantic University. 24 00:00:47.113 --> 00:00:48.181 And you introduce yourself 25 00:00:48.181 --> 00:00:50.950 to me as a vertebrate paleontologist. 26 00:00:51.184 --> 00:00:51.751 And you 27 00:00:52.052 --> 00:00:54.120 and you specialize in the end of the Cretaceous period, 28 00:00:54.120 --> 00:00:56.189 which was ended very suddenly by an event 29 00:00:56.222 --> 00:00:58.258 we're going to talk about today. Absolutely right. 30 00:00:58.358 --> 00:01:00.160 Okay. Well, enjoy the symposium. We'll be back later. 31 00:01:00.160 --> 00:01:00.493 Thank you. 32 00:01:01.928 --> 00:01:02.829 Thank you very much. 33 00:01:02.829 --> 00:01:03.730 And today, 34 00:01:03.730 --> 00:01:06.599 I'll be talking about a very, very exciting bit of research 35 00:01:06.800 --> 00:01:10.136 that deals with probably one of the worst days of the Mesozoic. 36 00:01:10.303 --> 00:01:12.238 It's when the Cretaceous ended. 37 00:01:12.238 --> 00:01:14.240 And anything that would have experienced 38 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:14.908 that day would have 39 00:01:14.908 --> 00:01:18.278 had probably the worst day that it ever, ever experienced. 40 00:01:18.745 --> 00:01:21.247 That is, of course, the Teacher of Impact event. 41 00:01:21.714 --> 00:01:24.684 And that event is what set in motion 42 00:01:24.884 --> 00:01:27.720 a series of events that really changed 43 00:01:27.720 --> 00:01:30.323 the topography of life on Earth as we know it. 44 00:01:30.757 --> 00:01:33.359 And it set the stage for what we have today. 45 00:01:33.359 --> 00:01:34.561 The important thing to remember, though, 46 00:01:34.561 --> 00:01:37.797 is that the teaching of events and understanding the teaching 47 00:01:37.831 --> 00:01:42.235 of event in every detail possible is literally our window 48 00:01:42.235 --> 00:01:43.069 into the past. 49 00:01:43.069 --> 00:01:46.773 To understand how Biota is going to respond to impact events, 50 00:01:46.973 --> 00:01:51.010 how biota is going to respond to global scale hazards 51 00:01:51.311 --> 00:01:54.180 , and in turn, how can we possibly deal with that today? 52 00:01:54.180 --> 00:01:56.316 So it directly relates to what's going on today, 53 00:01:56.583 --> 00:01:58.952 and that's where Earth and space science really meet. 54 00:02:00.186 --> 00:02:02.288 And a little bit about the future of impact. 55 00:02:02.288 --> 00:02:05.058 We're talking about an asteroid that was relatively 56 00:02:05.058 --> 00:02:06.726 ten kilometers in diameter 57 00:02:06.726 --> 00:02:09.162 and that's going to come in roughly 20 kilometers a second. 58 00:02:09.462 --> 00:02:11.831 It's going to lose enormous amounts of energy. 59 00:02:11.998 --> 00:02:13.199 You're going to have seismicity, 60 00:02:13.199 --> 00:02:16.703 possibly magnitude 11 to a magnitude 12 61 00:02:17.237 --> 00:02:18.438 at the impact site, 62 00:02:18.438 --> 00:02:20.140 and that's greater than you're going to see 63 00:02:20.140 --> 00:02:21.641 in the Earth normally. 64 00:02:21.641 --> 00:02:23.943 And what that did is that set in motion 65 00:02:24.110 --> 00:02:27.046 a cascade effect of ecological collapse. 66 00:02:27.180 --> 00:02:28.648 You're going to block out the sun. 67 00:02:28.648 --> 00:02:29.048 You're going to have 68 00:02:29.048 --> 00:02:31.317 this injection of a massive amount 69 00:02:31.317 --> 00:02:33.186 of contamination into the atmosphere. 70 00:02:33.186 --> 00:02:35.421 And it's really going to set everything off kilter. 71 00:02:35.755 --> 00:02:39.159 That is what set in motion the massive extinction 72 00:02:39.159 --> 00:02:43.229 that basically took out 75% of species on earth. 73 00:02:44.030 --> 00:02:46.766 So all of that that we know, we've got this tremendous 74 00:02:46.766 --> 00:02:49.169 amount of information about the big event 75 00:02:49.169 --> 00:02:51.471 and there's still questions that are unanswered. 76 00:02:51.471 --> 00:02:54.340 We know all sorts of things about what happened 77 00:02:54.407 --> 00:02:57.443 on these long timescales, talking in generalities. 78 00:02:57.710 --> 00:02:59.979 So what happened over millions of years? 79 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:00.680 You know, 80 00:03:00.680 --> 00:03:04.551 what's our percentage of species that died and what happened 81 00:03:04.551 --> 00:03:05.585 on a large scale? 82 00:03:05.585 --> 00:03:08.221 But what about those finer time scales? 83 00:03:08.354 --> 00:03:10.156 What happened in the hour today? 84 00:03:10.156 --> 00:03:11.224 Time scales. 85 00:03:11.224 --> 00:03:12.859 And the fact of the matter is, 86 00:03:12.859 --> 00:03:15.428 we just don't know the answers to a lot of those questions, 87 00:03:15.728 --> 00:03:19.532 because the way to answer them depends on a geologic record 88 00:03:19.632 --> 00:03:21.768 that is suited to answering those questions. 89 00:03:21.834 --> 00:03:24.571 Most of your rock units don't preserve that sort of data. 90 00:03:24.871 --> 00:03:26.773 And it takes a really special sort of a 91 00:03:26.773 --> 00:03:29.475 an area special sort of a site to preserve 92 00:03:29.676 --> 00:03:30.777 that kind of a snapshot. 93 00:03:31.744 --> 00:03:33.713 And that's where this new site comes in. 94 00:03:33.713 --> 00:03:35.348 So there's actually a new site 95 00:03:35.348 --> 00:03:38.084 at the very end of the Cretaceous in North America 96 00:03:38.251 --> 00:03:41.521 that preserves a snapshot of life on Earth. 97 00:03:42.088 --> 00:03:45.892 And this site, it gives a very, very tight 98 00:03:46.259 --> 00:03:49.596 view of what happened in the terrestrial setting. 99 00:03:50.029 --> 00:03:52.865 It gives a view of what happened moments after impact. 100 00:03:53.099 --> 00:03:54.434 We're able to see what happened 101 00:03:54.434 --> 00:03:56.603 with the very first stages of ejecta accretion. 102 00:03:56.769 --> 00:04:00.340 And we're basically able to see, well, what did happen in 103 00:04:00.340 --> 00:04:02.108 that little tiny nugget of time 104 00:04:02.108 --> 00:04:04.611 that really is sort of missing in the geologic record now. 105 00:04:05.178 --> 00:04:06.613 How can we actually feel that 106 00:04:06.613 --> 00:04:09.048 the site actually does that for us? 107 00:04:09.048 --> 00:04:11.517 The study region is within the Hell Creek formation. 108 00:04:11.884 --> 00:04:12.752 So that represents 109 00:04:12.752 --> 00:04:15.455 roughly the last 1.3 million years of the Cretaceous. 110 00:04:15.788 --> 00:04:17.123 It's a terrestrial setting, 111 00:04:17.123 --> 00:04:19.292 sort of like the Gulf Coastal Plains today. 112 00:04:19.292 --> 00:04:21.461 You had all these rivers that would have flowed 113 00:04:21.461 --> 00:04:24.964 from the inland areas all the way out to the Seaway 114 00:04:24.964 --> 00:04:26.799 that would have split the US in two. 115 00:04:26.799 --> 00:04:29.369 Back then you had all these fluvial deposits. 116 00:04:29.402 --> 00:04:30.837 You had lots of dinosaurs. 117 00:04:30.837 --> 00:04:31.804 Life was abundant. 118 00:04:31.804 --> 00:04:35.408 This was a vibrant, thriving ecosystem in the Hell Creek, 119 00:04:35.708 --> 00:04:39.512 and it's a hotbed for Cape Research because it just happens 120 00:04:39.679 --> 00:04:43.616 that this area is the best terrestrial succession 121 00:04:43.816 --> 00:04:47.453 of Cretaceous to Paleocene rocks in the world. 122 00:04:48.054 --> 00:04:51.057 And we're able to study the impact event most places 123 00:04:51.057 --> 00:04:53.593 that is just preserved as a single layer of fallout. 124 00:04:53.893 --> 00:04:55.061 But the new site actually 125 00:04:55.061 --> 00:04:56.429 has something a little bit different in store. 126 00:04:57.463 --> 00:05:00.066 Normally we see the cape do boundary, something like this. 127 00:05:00.099 --> 00:05:03.436 There I am up on the the outcrop, studying the 128 00:05:03.970 --> 00:05:06.239 dividing line between the Cretaceous and Paleo gene. 129 00:05:07.073 --> 00:05:07.974 There's a closer view. 130 00:05:07.974 --> 00:05:10.810 There's Professor Phil Manning and I digging into it. 131 00:05:10.910 --> 00:05:13.346 And you can see that that layer is very, very distinct. 132 00:05:13.346 --> 00:05:14.847 You've got your dark gray sediments 133 00:05:14.847 --> 00:05:16.282 and this beautiful light colored, 134 00:05:16.282 --> 00:05:18.484 this peach colored clay layer. 135 00:05:18.484 --> 00:05:22.021 And that clay layer is 100% composed of impact 136 00:05:22.021 --> 00:05:23.056 derived materials. 137 00:05:23.056 --> 00:05:25.658 You've got shocked quartz, you've got ejecta, spherules, 138 00:05:25.792 --> 00:05:28.227 you've got an iridium spike, you've got all this stuff 139 00:05:28.461 --> 00:05:30.363 that was blasted into the air 140 00:05:30.363 --> 00:05:32.198 and it came down around the entire globe 141 00:05:32.198 --> 00:05:33.633 as this little layer. 142 00:05:33.633 --> 00:05:36.269 And this is how it manifests in the Hell Creek formation. 143 00:05:36.869 --> 00:05:39.572 We've heard about the impact event, 144 00:05:39.572 --> 00:05:41.240 we've heard about the future of impact, 145 00:05:41.240 --> 00:05:43.609 and we know the name Walter Alvarez. 146 00:05:43.609 --> 00:05:44.744 It's associated with it. 147 00:05:44.744 --> 00:05:47.413 And here we are actually digging into the layer at the site 148 00:05:47.680 --> 00:05:52.452 and working through these these problems at this new site . 149 00:05:52.452 --> 00:05:54.754 And it's sort of an incredible story 150 00:05:54.987 --> 00:05:57.590 as it comes together with all the mines that are involved 151 00:05:57.890 --> 00:06:00.660 and and piecing these little details together. 152 00:06:01.728 --> 00:06:03.863 So let's get into the the site itself. 153 00:06:03.863 --> 00:06:05.365 The site is known as Tanis. 154 00:06:05.365 --> 00:06:08.000 And this site, the depositional setting, 155 00:06:08.301 --> 00:06:11.471 is basically in a little river environment 156 00:06:11.471 --> 00:06:12.772 back in the Cretaceous. 157 00:06:12.772 --> 00:06:15.508 So you have point bars in the bends in the river. 158 00:06:15.808 --> 00:06:20.380 And essentially what occurred is a massive surge of water left 159 00:06:20.380 --> 00:06:24.350 a layer of mud as a drape over one of these point bars. 160 00:06:24.751 --> 00:06:28.454 And you've got maybe ten and a half meters of elevation change. 161 00:06:28.454 --> 00:06:30.223 So it's a pretty steep point bar. 162 00:06:30.223 --> 00:06:31.657 And you've got this veneer of sediment 163 00:06:31.657 --> 00:06:34.160 that got deposited really rapidly on the point bar. 164 00:06:34.460 --> 00:06:36.629 It's actually really good for preservation. 165 00:06:36.629 --> 00:06:39.165 And you can see here, it was a really turbulent deposit. 166 00:06:39.332 --> 00:06:41.134 You've got all these 167 00:06:41.134 --> 00:06:45.438 these chaotically deposited laminae of silt and sand 168 00:06:45.638 --> 00:06:46.706 and mixed in with that, 169 00:06:46.706 --> 00:06:50.076 you've got this mass death layer of mostly fish 170 00:06:50.643 --> 00:06:52.678 and you've got trees, you've got other plants, 171 00:06:52.678 --> 00:06:54.881 you've got other organisms all mixed in 172 00:06:54.881 --> 00:06:58.518 to this really dense layer of dead creatures. 173 00:06:58.851 --> 00:07:01.521 And this was all pushed in at relatively the same time. 174 00:07:01.988 --> 00:07:03.589 And you can see it, right, 175 00:07:03.589 --> 00:07:07.427 the chaotically oriented mud class at the bottom. 176 00:07:07.427 --> 00:07:09.762 So what those are we call a rip up class. 177 00:07:09.962 --> 00:07:12.231 And we have a really turbulent surge of water. 178 00:07:12.331 --> 00:07:14.967 It's going to rip up whatever sediment it encounters. 179 00:07:15.201 --> 00:07:17.336 It's going to trap basically. Right. 180 00:07:17.336 --> 00:07:18.304 All those together, 181 00:07:18.304 --> 00:07:20.072 it's going to tumble those and cause 182 00:07:20.072 --> 00:07:22.408 this little layer of rip up class. 183 00:07:22.408 --> 00:07:23.543 And that's what we see there. 184 00:07:25.812 --> 00:07:26.412 We have our 185 00:07:26.412 --> 00:07:29.682 sturgeon there and that's mostly what we see with the fish. 186 00:07:29.682 --> 00:07:31.517 We have our sturgeon and paddlefish 187 00:07:31.517 --> 00:07:32.552 and then mixed in with those, 188 00:07:32.552 --> 00:07:34.487 we've got other terrestrial biota. 189 00:07:34.487 --> 00:07:36.622 This is what the site looks like today. 190 00:07:36.622 --> 00:07:37.690 It looks very, very different. 191 00:07:37.690 --> 00:07:39.592 You don't have that subtropical area that we even 192 00:07:39.592 --> 00:07:41.160 had the Hell Creek formation. 193 00:07:41.160 --> 00:07:44.730 This is the Prairie and the the American West. 194 00:07:45.031 --> 00:07:48.634 And you can actually kind of get an idea of the elevation 195 00:07:48.634 --> 00:07:49.535 change there at the site. 196 00:07:49.535 --> 00:07:52.171 We're about two thirds up that angled point bar. 197 00:07:52.472 --> 00:07:53.806 And you can see way down there 198 00:07:53.806 --> 00:07:56.142 at the vehicles is near the base of the point bar 199 00:07:56.776 --> 00:07:58.144 and it even goes up from there . 200 00:07:58.144 --> 00:08:00.446 We've got ten and a half meters of elevation change 201 00:08:00.780 --> 00:08:03.382 continuously unbroken in that deposit. 202 00:08:04.283 --> 00:08:06.285 And when we start digging up these 203 00:08:06.519 --> 00:08:08.988 these remains, you can think, well, well, when are we? 204 00:08:08.988 --> 00:08:10.957 You know, we're basically digging through time. 205 00:08:10.957 --> 00:08:12.124 So when are we? 206 00:08:12.124 --> 00:08:13.960 That's the big question we always ask. 207 00:08:13.960 --> 00:08:16.362 And we have to answer that multiple different ways, 208 00:08:16.395 --> 00:08:17.797 not just one. 209 00:08:17.964 --> 00:08:20.333 And one of those ways is with the plants. 210 00:08:20.500 --> 00:08:22.001 So the mega floor at the site 211 00:08:22.001 --> 00:08:22.902 and this is one of the things 212 00:08:22.902 --> 00:08:25.805 that has been independently verified by Baylor botanist 213 00:08:25.905 --> 00:08:26.506 Patrick Herren. 214 00:08:26.506 --> 00:08:30.710 DEAN And when we look at the flora that are present 215 00:08:30.910 --> 00:08:34.881 in that that point bar deposit and the surge deposit 216 00:08:35.081 --> 00:08:36.983 and compare that to the underlying sediments 217 00:08:36.983 --> 00:08:38.050 that that river dug through, 218 00:08:38.050 --> 00:08:40.653 the incised sediments which are obviously older, 219 00:08:41.053 --> 00:08:44.323 we see a distinct difference in the flora between those 220 00:08:44.524 --> 00:08:46.592 the flora there in the surge deposit 221 00:08:46.592 --> 00:08:48.261 and that are in the point bar 222 00:08:48.261 --> 00:08:50.730 are much younger and they constrain to the very, 223 00:08:50.730 --> 00:08:53.533 very upper most Cretaceous, the terminal Cretaceous 224 00:08:53.733 --> 00:08:56.135 and the uppermost hell creek formation. 225 00:08:56.135 --> 00:08:57.737 Same with the pollen. 226 00:08:57.737 --> 00:09:01.240 And this has been independently verified by paleontologist 227 00:09:01.407 --> 00:09:02.642 Steve Bosworth. 228 00:09:02.642 --> 00:09:05.478 And the pollen shows us the same thing pretty much that the 229 00:09:06.045 --> 00:09:08.981 the flora show us basically the foot, 230 00:09:09.048 --> 00:09:12.051 the pollen in the uppermost part of the deposit 231 00:09:12.051 --> 00:09:15.521 and your point bar and in your surge deposit match 232 00:09:15.655 --> 00:09:18.858 with the uppermost held creek, the terminal Cretaceous 233 00:09:19.125 --> 00:09:22.061 and then the incised bedrock is a little bit older. 234 00:09:22.094 --> 00:09:23.529 It's what you would expect. 235 00:09:23.529 --> 00:09:26.165 So we've got these redundant ways 236 00:09:26.332 --> 00:09:29.802 of basically putting a time stamp on our deposit. 237 00:09:31.304 --> 00:09:32.905 And the ejected does that as well. 238 00:09:32.905 --> 00:09:34.640 And here are some examples of the ejector here. 239 00:09:34.640 --> 00:09:38.711 We've got this, the space component of this site, and 240 00:09:39.312 --> 00:09:42.114 this is a basic stratigraphic column of the site. 241 00:09:42.114 --> 00:09:44.550 And you can see the the grain size curve. 242 00:09:44.550 --> 00:09:46.085 So you go from large to small green. 243 00:09:46.085 --> 00:09:48.020 We've got two major pulses in the site. 244 00:09:48.020 --> 00:09:50.389 They've got one major pulse 245 00:09:50.389 --> 00:09:53.593 backflow and then another pulse that goes all the way up. 246 00:09:53.859 --> 00:09:56.028 There's ejecta throughout this deposit. 247 00:09:56.028 --> 00:09:58.364 You've got ejecta spherules like you see here 248 00:09:59.098 --> 00:10:01.634 that would have come from the impact site. 249 00:10:02.068 --> 00:10:05.004 You've got that impactor, it hits your target rock 250 00:10:05.204 --> 00:10:07.173 and you get blobs of molten glass 251 00:10:07.173 --> 00:10:08.841 and different material that shoot up into the sky, 252 00:10:08.841 --> 00:10:11.143 out of the atmosphere and they come back down again. 253 00:10:11.677 --> 00:10:15.848 And that is a diagnostic feature of impact, as 254 00:10:15.848 --> 00:10:19.218 is your shocked quartz at right, which we find in the capping 255 00:10:19.819 --> 00:10:22.521 jpg torn stein which caps the site. 256 00:10:22.521 --> 00:10:25.091 So you literally have this ejecta bearing deposit, 257 00:10:25.591 --> 00:10:28.227 which is capped by the very fine grained debris 258 00:10:28.227 --> 00:10:29.595 from that impact event. 259 00:10:29.595 --> 00:10:31.697 So that really seals it all together. 260 00:10:31.697 --> 00:10:33.399 You also have micro Chris Stites. 261 00:10:33.399 --> 00:10:34.934 So these are 262 00:10:34.934 --> 00:10:38.704 formed as a condensate from the vaporized impactor. 263 00:10:38.704 --> 00:10:41.340 So you've got that asteroid. It vaporizes on impact. 264 00:10:41.540 --> 00:10:43.275 And as that condenses, 265 00:10:43.275 --> 00:10:44.176 you get these forming 266 00:10:44.176 --> 00:10:45.177 and you've got the 267 00:10:45.177 --> 00:10:47.213 typical enrichments in chromium and nickel 268 00:10:47.213 --> 00:10:49.048 and iron and so forth 269 00:10:49.048 --> 00:10:52.151 that are attributed to the micro Chris sites. 270 00:10:53.085 --> 00:10:56.022 Now getting into all the stuff that's buried in the deposit. 271 00:10:56.022 --> 00:10:56.889 Let's get to the 272 00:10:56.889 --> 00:10:59.625 coolest thing of all time, which is logs, right? 273 00:10:59.892 --> 00:11:02.094 Because we all think logs are really cool, right? 274 00:11:02.261 --> 00:11:04.530 Well, these logs actually happen to be cool 275 00:11:04.530 --> 00:11:07.900 because in this site wrapped around the logs, 276 00:11:07.900 --> 00:11:09.535 you've got all these animals and different things. 277 00:11:09.535 --> 00:11:10.970 But the logs themselves, 278 00:11:10.970 --> 00:11:14.340 which in some cases can be 20 to 30 feet long, 279 00:11:14.940 --> 00:11:17.143 the longest ones we've dug up so far, 280 00:11:17.143 --> 00:11:19.278 really well-preserved semi three dimensional, 281 00:11:19.512 --> 00:11:21.547 but they also have runnels of amber on them. 282 00:11:21.547 --> 00:11:23.349 So we know that resin would go down the trees 283 00:11:23.349 --> 00:11:26.419 and we've got runnels of amber on the exterior of the logs . 284 00:11:26.419 --> 00:11:28.320 Okay, that's great. We've all seen Jurassic Park. 285 00:11:28.320 --> 00:11:30.423 We know that Amber is a great thing for paleontology. 286 00:11:30.423 --> 00:11:32.725 But in this case, Amber, 287 00:11:33.125 --> 00:11:36.128 when that resin is still flowing, is a way to capture 288 00:11:36.128 --> 00:11:37.797 whatever is going through the air. 289 00:11:37.797 --> 00:11:40.066 And on the day of the chuchu of impact, 290 00:11:40.166 --> 00:11:42.702 that's the time when I really want to see what's in the amber. 291 00:11:43.169 --> 00:11:45.471 So what are we finding here? 292 00:11:45.471 --> 00:11:46.906 Well, we're sieving out the amber. 293 00:11:46.906 --> 00:11:47.773 We're actually going through it. 294 00:11:47.773 --> 00:11:50.409 There's Pym Cask is another researcher 295 00:11:50.409 --> 00:11:53.112 who is doing work out there from Vue, Amsterdam. 296 00:11:53.479 --> 00:11:55.748 And here are some of the pieces of amber from the site. 297 00:11:55.748 --> 00:11:57.583 There's little pieces of the wood, 298 00:11:57.583 --> 00:12:00.119 but here we've got pieces of amber from the site. 299 00:12:00.119 --> 00:12:01.120 You can actually see 300 00:12:01.120 --> 00:12:02.588 texture from the surface of that one 301 00:12:02.588 --> 00:12:04.757 that that matches the bark from the tree. 302 00:12:04.790 --> 00:12:06.392 So this is really well preserved. 303 00:12:06.392 --> 00:12:10.262 Amber And when we look inside, we've got beautifully preserved. 304 00:12:10.429 --> 00:12:13.132 Ejecta Spherules from the impact event. 305 00:12:13.532 --> 00:12:14.734 These haven't been exposed yet. 306 00:12:14.734 --> 00:12:16.202 They're still in the amber 307 00:12:16.202 --> 00:12:18.804 and these two spherules have been exposed. 308 00:12:18.971 --> 00:12:19.638 And we can see that 309 00:12:19.638 --> 00:12:23.342 beautiful black glass of of the impact spiral. 310 00:12:23.642 --> 00:12:26.712 That's not usually what you see what the future of impact 311 00:12:26.712 --> 00:12:30.015 normally we're looking at what you see at left 312 00:12:30.349 --> 00:12:33.185 a really awful crumbly clay spheroidal 313 00:12:33.519 --> 00:12:36.956 because a really bad thing happens in the geologic record. 314 00:12:37.156 --> 00:12:42.094 What happens is glass will then alter when it takes on water 315 00:12:42.228 --> 00:12:44.930 so it hydrates and glass will then turn to clay. 316 00:12:45.197 --> 00:12:47.066 In this case smectite clay 317 00:12:47.066 --> 00:12:49.368 and it becomes crumbly and not too nice. 318 00:12:49.635 --> 00:12:53.439 And we look at these as researchers of the 319 00:12:53.472 --> 00:12:55.608 of the impact event and we think, oh, man, 320 00:12:55.641 --> 00:12:57.276 what did that look like on the day of impact? 321 00:12:57.276 --> 00:12:58.577 What did it look like when it was pristine? 322 00:12:58.577 --> 00:12:58.978 And we have to 323 00:12:58.978 --> 00:13:02.615 use our imaginations to think, what did that used to look like? 324 00:13:02.948 --> 00:13:04.283 That's what it used to look like. 325 00:13:04.283 --> 00:13:06.652 That's one of the only pristine 326 00:13:06.652 --> 00:13:09.889 pieces of impact ejecta from the chuchu impact 327 00:13:09.889 --> 00:13:11.490 and the amber there is full of it. 328 00:13:11.490 --> 00:13:13.626 So that's a really good hotbed for research 329 00:13:14.093 --> 00:13:16.662 and it helps us to give a fingerprint to the site. 330 00:13:17.129 --> 00:13:17.797 Right. 331 00:13:17.797 --> 00:13:21.333 So some of those little clay spirals didn't completely alter. 332 00:13:21.700 --> 00:13:24.503 So this is a beautiful micro 333 00:13:24.570 --> 00:13:28.007 CD that my colleague Lauren Gursky put together. 334 00:13:28.007 --> 00:13:30.209 And the blue portion is the clay. 335 00:13:30.442 --> 00:13:30.810 All right. 336 00:13:30.810 --> 00:13:33.012 And the interior, the green portion 337 00:13:33.212 --> 00:13:35.981 is the unaltered core of that sphere. 338 00:13:36.649 --> 00:13:39.118 And looking at those and the ones from Amber, 339 00:13:39.118 --> 00:13:41.687 we're able to establish a geochemical fingerprint 340 00:13:41.787 --> 00:13:43.522 with the chuchu of impact 341 00:13:43.522 --> 00:13:46.659 and with glass from the tree to the impact from elsewhere and 342 00:13:48.060 --> 00:13:50.262 geochemical fingerprints on the crater site. 343 00:13:50.262 --> 00:13:53.365 And also that glass has a temporal fingerprint. 344 00:13:53.632 --> 00:13:54.800 So we're able to radiometric 345 00:13:54.800 --> 00:13:56.902 date that argon argon dating 346 00:13:57.069 --> 00:13:58.270 and come up with a date 347 00:13:58.270 --> 00:14:00.272 that matches the CHUCHU lab event. 348 00:14:00.539 --> 00:14:03.776 So able to match this of this event with the site, 349 00:14:04.076 --> 00:14:07.780 with the biota, with the microorganisms, 350 00:14:07.980 --> 00:14:11.717 with the geochemistry, with the radio isotopes, everything. 351 00:14:11.951 --> 00:14:14.520 So we're able to come up with these reinforcing ways 352 00:14:14.520 --> 00:14:16.789 of linking it with the chuchu live event. 353 00:14:16.822 --> 00:14:17.122 So good. 354 00:14:17.122 --> 00:14:19.792 We've got something that's linked to the day of the impact. 355 00:14:19.792 --> 00:14:20.693 That's excellent. 356 00:14:20.693 --> 00:14:22.228 So how can we get this timing 357 00:14:22.228 --> 00:14:25.030 constrained a little bit in the ejecta sort of is our key 358 00:14:25.264 --> 00:14:28.467 because that entire column of sediment. 359 00:14:29.435 --> 00:14:32.738 Was getting deposited during active ejecta accretion. 360 00:14:33.272 --> 00:14:35.241 Of course grained ejecta. 361 00:14:35.241 --> 00:14:38.611 So basically since that site is covered 362 00:14:38.611 --> 00:14:40.079 in your fine grained on stone. 363 00:14:41.247 --> 00:14:42.381 That came out later. 364 00:14:42.381 --> 00:14:45.217 And your column is filled with your coarse grain ejecta. 365 00:14:45.317 --> 00:14:48.254 You're tied to that coarse, grain, dejected accretion 366 00:14:48.387 --> 00:14:49.188 time window. 367 00:14:49.188 --> 00:14:51.223 And that's within roughly the first hour, 368 00:14:51.223 --> 00:14:53.459 maybe two at most after impact. 369 00:14:53.659 --> 00:14:55.828 You want to be really, really generous, maybe, say an hour 370 00:14:55.828 --> 00:14:57.997 and a half to 2 hours after impact. 371 00:14:58.297 --> 00:15:01.166 And geologically speaking, that is the blink of an eye. 372 00:15:01.367 --> 00:15:03.469 That is the sort of honey spot that we're looking for. 373 00:15:03.702 --> 00:15:05.671 Because when you're looking at the impact event 374 00:15:05.671 --> 00:15:07.439 in the terms of hundreds of thousands 375 00:15:07.439 --> 00:15:08.741 to millions of years, 376 00:15:08.741 --> 00:15:10.009 and you're able to get a site 377 00:15:10.009 --> 00:15:12.177 with that sort of temporal resolution, 378 00:15:12.177 --> 00:15:14.780 then you can answer all sorts of questions 379 00:15:14.780 --> 00:15:16.882 if you find the right types of material there . 380 00:15:16.882 --> 00:15:18.217 And that we know we're in the gold now. 381 00:15:18.217 --> 00:15:20.552 Now is when we can start answering those questions. 382 00:15:21.153 --> 00:15:23.489 Now, go back to the temporal resolution. 383 00:15:23.489 --> 00:15:25.457 How can we possibly constrain that a little more? 384 00:15:25.457 --> 00:15:27.092 The ejecta is our key. 385 00:15:27.092 --> 00:15:30.062 We know that whole deposit was within the first hour 386 00:15:30.062 --> 00:15:31.330 or two after impact, 387 00:15:31.330 --> 00:15:34.533 but when we have lenses like that throughout the deposit, 388 00:15:35.067 --> 00:15:37.970 we can work out based on their average diameter 389 00:15:38.570 --> 00:15:40.839 when they would have arrived at the site. 390 00:15:40.839 --> 00:15:41.540 And Walter 391 00:15:41.540 --> 00:15:44.310 actually helped by doing a lot of those calculations. 392 00:15:44.576 --> 00:15:47.446 And what we turned up was, is 393 00:15:47.613 --> 00:15:49.281 you can get those different 394 00:15:49.281 --> 00:15:51.517 lenses throughout the thing and those are basically 395 00:15:51.650 --> 00:15:53.585 your little time stamps throughout the deposit. 396 00:15:53.585 --> 00:15:56.855 You could further subdivide the chronology of this deposit 397 00:15:57.089 --> 00:15:59.959 based on the incoming time of the ejecta spherules 398 00:16:00.326 --> 00:16:01.660 and that's the beauty of the site. 399 00:16:01.660 --> 00:16:03.462 So you can actually get this little 400 00:16:03.462 --> 00:16:06.598 this little tidbit of a view every step up the column. 401 00:16:07.800 --> 00:16:08.400 But that doesn't 402 00:16:08.400 --> 00:16:11.503 actually solve the surge where the surge come from. 403 00:16:11.737 --> 00:16:13.405 I'm not going to belabor that too much. 404 00:16:13.405 --> 00:16:15.107 We have this big surge of water. 405 00:16:15.107 --> 00:16:17.476 It happened at the same time of the impact. 406 00:16:17.476 --> 00:16:19.745 Where it come from? What's the deal? 407 00:16:19.745 --> 00:16:22.948 Basically, we know that the site was part 408 00:16:22.948 --> 00:16:25.250 of the point guard system of a big river, 409 00:16:25.250 --> 00:16:27.720 a very large river that cut deeply into the Hell 410 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:28.754 Creek landscape 411 00:16:28.754 --> 00:16:31.123 and that emptied out into the Western Interior Seaway. 412 00:16:31.523 --> 00:16:33.292 Okay. We already know that fact. 413 00:16:33.292 --> 00:16:34.360 We know there was a big surge 414 00:16:34.360 --> 00:16:36.095 that occurred in a couple of pulses. 415 00:16:36.095 --> 00:16:36.628 We got bi 416 00:16:36.628 --> 00:16:39.965 directional flow preserved in our sedimentary structures. 417 00:16:40.532 --> 00:16:43.068 Most of our surge was going inland. 418 00:16:43.068 --> 00:16:45.204 Essentially, that river was flowing backwards 419 00:16:45.204 --> 00:16:47.406 during the greatest sedimentation 420 00:16:47.906 --> 00:16:49.341 episodes of that event. 421 00:16:49.341 --> 00:16:53.312 So we know that surge came from the direction 422 00:16:53.312 --> 00:16:54.947 of the Western Interior Seaway. 423 00:16:54.947 --> 00:16:56.949 It was flowing westward from an eastern direction. 424 00:16:57.649 --> 00:17:00.986 And that's kind of like a tip off right there. 425 00:17:00.986 --> 00:17:02.855 It's a tsunami like wave. 426 00:17:02.855 --> 00:17:03.655 And it's turning out 427 00:17:03.655 --> 00:17:05.357 that the seismic waves arrived 428 00:17:05.357 --> 00:17:07.693 right around the time of this wave 429 00:17:07.693 --> 00:17:09.495 that deposited the Tanis sediments. 430 00:17:09.495 --> 00:17:13.232 So probably the seismic input was what caused it, 431 00:17:13.232 --> 00:17:15.300 not a tsunami from the impact site, 432 00:17:15.300 --> 00:17:17.136 but it's a seismic shaking. 433 00:17:17.136 --> 00:17:19.338 We're not going to get into that too much with this one. 434 00:17:19.338 --> 00:17:20.339 But basically, 435 00:17:20.339 --> 00:17:22.141 this is what your cross-section would look like, 436 00:17:22.141 --> 00:17:24.143 an idealized cross-section of the site. 437 00:17:24.143 --> 00:17:27.079 Your white arrow out is going to give your flow. 438 00:17:27.146 --> 00:17:30.482 The river easily documented all at the site. 439 00:17:30.582 --> 00:17:32.651 Know you've got all your typical said structures 440 00:17:32.651 --> 00:17:35.354 and then you've got your opposite flow from 441 00:17:35.354 --> 00:17:36.822 the surge would have been about ten 442 00:17:36.822 --> 00:17:38.891 and a half meters and it would have filled it up 443 00:17:38.891 --> 00:17:40.559 like that, possibly more. 444 00:17:40.559 --> 00:17:42.594 But that's what the fossil record shows us, 445 00:17:42.594 --> 00:17:45.197 and it could have been even deeper than that. 446 00:17:45.197 --> 00:17:47.199 We've got let's go back a little bit. 447 00:17:47.199 --> 00:17:50.903 We've got CPG boundary preserved directly on top of the surge 448 00:17:50.903 --> 00:17:52.171 deposit here. 449 00:17:52.171 --> 00:17:54.907 We've got KPMG boundary preserved here 450 00:17:55.074 --> 00:17:56.642 and the over bank deposit 451 00:17:56.642 --> 00:18:00.079 and then also at the edge over at six at Brooke Butte, 452 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:03.248 which is about one, 1.1, 1.2 kilometers to the north. 453 00:18:03.682 --> 00:18:05.584 So we've got KP boundary 454 00:18:05.584 --> 00:18:08.387 sediments all over the place from site. 455 00:18:08.387 --> 00:18:09.354 And there it is, filling up. 456 00:18:10.322 --> 00:18:11.256 And we've 457 00:18:11.256 --> 00:18:14.293 actually got some of our Marine fossils that show you. 458 00:18:14.293 --> 00:18:16.995 Yes, this is probably a surge that originated from the seaway. 459 00:18:17.196 --> 00:18:19.198 We've got freshwater organisms at. Right. 460 00:18:19.198 --> 00:18:20.265 Like the sturgeon. 461 00:18:20.265 --> 00:18:22.434 We've got this beautiful feather which came from 462 00:18:22.434 --> 00:18:24.736 probably a bird or a man, a raptor and dinosaur. 463 00:18:24.736 --> 00:18:27.072 We've got those mixed in with Ammonites. 464 00:18:27.072 --> 00:18:28.574 It's a marine shelled mollusk. 465 00:18:28.574 --> 00:18:31.243 We've got sharks, mosasaurs, different marine fish, 466 00:18:31.944 --> 00:18:35.581 marine farming, afra, and things that just don't belong there. 467 00:18:35.581 --> 00:18:37.983 These don't exist in the Hell Creek formation normally. 468 00:18:38.450 --> 00:18:40.719 There are two marine tongues in the Hell Creek formation. 469 00:18:40.919 --> 00:18:42.554 But the fossils, the timing 470 00:18:42.554 --> 00:18:44.823 and the mode of preservation don't match with the site. 471 00:18:44.823 --> 00:18:47.292 So there's no linkage there. 472 00:18:47.392 --> 00:18:49.194 So we'll talk about the animals a little bit. 473 00:18:49.194 --> 00:18:52.798 The biota of Tanis and the new insight into life 474 00:18:52.798 --> 00:18:54.333 at the end of the Cretaceous based on that. 475 00:18:54.333 --> 00:18:55.601 So we've got our connection 476 00:18:55.601 --> 00:18:57.870 between the impact event and the biota, 477 00:18:57.870 --> 00:19:00.839 and most of that biota turns out to be fish. 478 00:19:00.839 --> 00:19:02.541 In this case, we've got a lot of 479 00:19:02.541 --> 00:19:04.576 we've got sturgeon, we've got paddlefish, 480 00:19:04.576 --> 00:19:06.512 we've got at least three new species of fish 481 00:19:06.512 --> 00:19:07.713 that are unnamed at this point. 482 00:19:07.713 --> 00:19:08.881 So we're already learning 483 00:19:08.881 --> 00:19:12.017 about the types of organisms that existed back then. 484 00:19:12.985 --> 00:19:15.888 But we're going to talk about a little more interesting things. 485 00:19:15.888 --> 00:19:17.523 They are now the pterosaurs. 486 00:19:17.523 --> 00:19:18.790 So these are winged reptiles. 487 00:19:18.790 --> 00:19:20.225 There's a flying reptiles. 488 00:19:20.225 --> 00:19:21.226 They existed back then. 489 00:19:21.226 --> 00:19:23.328 At the end of the Cretaceous, 490 00:19:23.328 --> 00:19:25.597 the Hell Creek formation had only one type 491 00:19:25.597 --> 00:19:27.032 that we're aware of the as dark it's 492 00:19:27.032 --> 00:19:28.433 that's the giant type 493 00:19:28.433 --> 00:19:30.302 Quetzalcoatlus is one of the ones that's more 494 00:19:30.302 --> 00:19:32.571 well known as the size of a small aircraft. 495 00:19:32.571 --> 00:19:35.607 So these are big pterosaurs. 496 00:19:35.607 --> 00:19:37.075 They're well known around the world. 497 00:19:37.075 --> 00:19:39.044 This is a great example 498 00:19:39.044 --> 00:19:41.613 of the basics of our knowledge of pterosaurs 499 00:19:41.613 --> 00:19:43.682 from their origin all the way up to the extinction. 500 00:19:43.682 --> 00:19:45.617 We know a lot about pterosaurs. 501 00:19:45.617 --> 00:19:49.021 We've got plentiful remains and they are sort of like, 502 00:19:49.354 --> 00:19:49.788 you know, 503 00:19:49.788 --> 00:19:51.456 one of the favorite things to study, 504 00:19:51.456 --> 00:19:52.925 the one thing we don't know a lot about 505 00:19:52.925 --> 00:19:54.459 is what were their eggs, babies, 506 00:19:54.459 --> 00:19:56.595 reproductive strategies and etc.. 507 00:19:56.895 --> 00:19:59.531 The embryos are practically unknown. 508 00:20:00.265 --> 00:20:02.768 That is the temporal span of our knowledge 509 00:20:02.768 --> 00:20:05.070 on pterosaur embryos, not that much. 510 00:20:05.804 --> 00:20:09.007 We've got one Terra Astro embryo. 511 00:20:09.575 --> 00:20:12.844 There are 18 embryos for the on the occurrence. 512 00:20:13.345 --> 00:20:13.912 That's it. 513 00:20:13.912 --> 00:20:14.313 You know, 514 00:20:14.313 --> 00:20:16.114 that's all there is in the entire world 515 00:20:16.114 --> 00:20:18.350 and none of them from North America. 516 00:20:18.350 --> 00:20:20.686 The good part about the site is the preservation 517 00:20:20.686 --> 00:20:22.988 potential is so good because that rapid deposition 518 00:20:23.255 --> 00:20:25.357 that we are able to add a data point to that 519 00:20:25.357 --> 00:20:28.293 and add the as darkens to the end of the Cretaceous. 520 00:20:28.293 --> 00:20:32.164 So we expand this temporally and taxonomic lee which delights 521 00:20:32.164 --> 00:20:32.898 us to no end. 522 00:20:34.066 --> 00:20:36.401 So ahead graphically, this is where we are. 523 00:20:37.636 --> 00:20:41.039 Most of our carcass tangle is going to be down here 524 00:20:41.273 --> 00:20:44.142 at the upper part of the first surge pulse 525 00:20:44.276 --> 00:20:46.044 and the lower part of the second pulse. That's 526 00:20:46.044 --> 00:20:48.113 where most of the organisms are in this deposit. 527 00:20:48.347 --> 00:20:50.215 Although, as I mentioned, some cross-cut 528 00:20:50.215 --> 00:20:52.985 the entire deposit at an angle to the bedding plan. 529 00:20:52.985 --> 00:20:54.419 So there's stuff throughout 530 00:20:54.419 --> 00:20:56.822 that's just your main concentration. 531 00:20:56.822 --> 00:20:59.758 The deposits capped by your Cape Town dean. 532 00:20:59.758 --> 00:21:02.327 So you've got your pristine, uninterrupted 533 00:21:02.494 --> 00:21:04.796 layer of impact debris. 534 00:21:04.796 --> 00:21:07.532 And the embryo comes from right here within the upper 535 00:21:07.532 --> 00:21:10.802 two thirds of the deposit. 536 00:21:10.802 --> 00:21:12.004 And here it is. 537 00:21:12.004 --> 00:21:13.939 So at left, you have a view. 538 00:21:13.939 --> 00:21:15.440 It's about the size of a hen's egg. 539 00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:17.476 This is a plain lite view of the embryo. 540 00:21:17.476 --> 00:21:20.946 We can see the tangle of dark brown bones there, 541 00:21:20.946 --> 00:21:22.814 which I'll show you later, are nicely 542 00:21:22.814 --> 00:21:24.516 articulated in most cases 543 00:21:24.516 --> 00:21:27.519 a brown halo for the shell, and it compares favorably 544 00:21:27.519 --> 00:21:29.721 with the embryos that are found elsewhere. 545 00:21:29.755 --> 00:21:32.924 So it right is one of the more famous embryos from Asia. 546 00:21:33.258 --> 00:21:35.761 And it's a beautiful or if accurate embryo. 547 00:21:36.361 --> 00:21:38.130 And the mode of preservation 548 00:21:38.130 --> 00:21:41.566 and the style of folding is very, very reminiscent of the 549 00:21:41.566 --> 00:21:42.267 Asian one. 550 00:21:42.267 --> 00:21:44.069 When we look at the Tanis one 551 00:21:44.069 --> 00:21:45.737 and here's a shot that Dave Berman 552 00:21:45.737 --> 00:21:48.573 I got going with the laser stimulated fluorescence, 553 00:21:48.573 --> 00:21:49.174 and you can see the 554 00:21:49.174 --> 00:21:51.243 bones come out and you can actually see 555 00:21:51.410 --> 00:21:52.944 some of the articulation. 556 00:21:52.944 --> 00:21:53.612 So here you go. 557 00:21:53.612 --> 00:21:54.179 You've got your 558 00:21:54.179 --> 00:21:56.048 your upper arm bone, your humerus, 559 00:21:56.048 --> 00:21:57.683 and you've got your radius and owner 560 00:21:57.683 --> 00:22:00.719 and then the long wing elements that are preserved there, 561 00:22:01.086 --> 00:22:02.788 they don't match anything that should be there. 562 00:22:02.788 --> 00:22:05.190 They don't match the birds or the dinosaurs. 563 00:22:05.390 --> 00:22:08.660 And the the structure of the bones 564 00:22:08.894 --> 00:22:11.430 and the anatomy of this creature 565 00:22:12.064 --> 00:22:14.800 really only compares favorably with the pterosaurs. 566 00:22:14.800 --> 00:22:16.835 So we're relatively confident 567 00:22:16.835 --> 00:22:18.603 and so is Davon, when our coauthor, 568 00:22:18.603 --> 00:22:20.505 one of the world's experts in pterosaurs, 569 00:22:20.505 --> 00:22:24.176 that this is a beautiful as dark and pterosaur embryo. 570 00:22:24.843 --> 00:22:26.645 And so as scientists, 571 00:22:26.645 --> 00:22:27.546 we just have to keep picking, picking, 572 00:22:27.546 --> 00:22:29.114 picking away at the details 573 00:22:29.114 --> 00:22:31.083 and figuring out what we could find out. 574 00:22:31.083 --> 00:22:33.118 And with these samples 575 00:22:33.118 --> 00:22:35.053 and with the ejecta, we ended up going 576 00:22:35.053 --> 00:22:36.955 to two of the most powerful 577 00:22:36.955 --> 00:22:39.224 synchrotron facilities in the world. 578 00:22:39.224 --> 00:22:42.561 We went to Sorrell at Stanford University and the Diamond 579 00:22:42.561 --> 00:22:47.332 Light Source in Oxford, UK, two absolutely gorgeous facilities 580 00:22:47.332 --> 00:22:49.301 and I cannot say enough about 581 00:22:49.301 --> 00:22:52.304 how wonderful they were during the analytical procedures. 582 00:22:53.004 --> 00:22:55.907 Here we are at the beamline, scanning the specimens. 583 00:22:55.907 --> 00:22:57.576 We've got the beam pipe here 584 00:22:57.576 --> 00:22:59.845 coming out of the storage ring, giving us our 585 00:22:59.845 --> 00:23:02.814 our lethal synchrotron radiation. 586 00:23:02.814 --> 00:23:05.350 You don't want to be in there when it's when it's operating. 587 00:23:05.650 --> 00:23:09.821 And we're able to find details with these methods 588 00:23:10.555 --> 00:23:13.592 about the organisms and their chemical makeup 589 00:23:13.759 --> 00:23:15.594 that you just can't find otherwise. 590 00:23:15.594 --> 00:23:17.396 And this particular beamline 591 00:23:17.396 --> 00:23:19.831 enables us to look at the chemical makeup 592 00:23:19.831 --> 00:23:22.868 and the spatial distribution of those different chemicals 593 00:23:23.969 --> 00:23:26.104 at a molecular scale. 594 00:23:26.204 --> 00:23:28.573 And you're able to see what does that organism made of? 595 00:23:28.974 --> 00:23:30.108 Is that material 596 00:23:30.108 --> 00:23:31.710 organically bound or is it something 597 00:23:31.710 --> 00:23:33.812 that's an artifact of the fossilization process? 598 00:23:34.179 --> 00:23:36.081 We're able to take these things down 599 00:23:36.081 --> 00:23:37.249 and look at all 600 00:23:37.249 --> 00:23:39.618 these little things that normally you can't see. 601 00:23:40.752 --> 00:23:42.521 And in this case, it's the sulfur. 602 00:23:42.521 --> 00:23:46.425 So there's a blown up view of the egg blue. 603 00:23:46.458 --> 00:23:49.127 You're looking at the bones of the pterosaur. 604 00:23:49.161 --> 00:23:50.962 All of that yellow is sulfur. 605 00:23:50.962 --> 00:23:54.132 And the sulfur follows the outline of your egg shell. 606 00:23:54.766 --> 00:23:57.402 The sulfur in this case is not just sulfur. 607 00:23:57.402 --> 00:23:58.804 We'd be happy if it was just sulfur. 608 00:23:58.804 --> 00:24:00.705 But in this case, it's not. 609 00:24:00.705 --> 00:24:02.808 Through the x ray absorption spectroscopy, 610 00:24:02.808 --> 00:24:03.942 we're able to determine that 611 00:24:03.942 --> 00:24:07.345 all of the sulfur you see on the screen was organically bound. 612 00:24:07.779 --> 00:24:09.181 That is not sulfur. 613 00:24:09.181 --> 00:24:11.917 That's a result of the Fossilization process. 614 00:24:12.217 --> 00:24:12.984 It's not something that 615 00:24:12.984 --> 00:24:14.319 precipitated or something 616 00:24:14.319 --> 00:24:17.122 during the classification of the outcrop. 617 00:24:17.322 --> 00:24:20.292 This is something that is tied to the organism itself. 618 00:24:20.559 --> 00:24:22.928 Moreover, it's probably tied to the egg shell 619 00:24:23.195 --> 00:24:25.297 because you would have had organic sulfur 620 00:24:25.297 --> 00:24:26.898 associated with the whole organism, but 621 00:24:26.898 --> 00:24:29.167 the egg shell would have been a little bit more resilient. 622 00:24:29.167 --> 00:24:32.137 And we suspect that that sulfur is probably tied 623 00:24:32.137 --> 00:24:35.740 to the cysteine in the the eggshell proteins. 624 00:24:36.741 --> 00:24:38.743 We're going to be looking further into that, 625 00:24:38.743 --> 00:24:39.744 going on to the shell. 626 00:24:39.744 --> 00:24:41.680 Here's some shots of the shell. 627 00:24:41.680 --> 00:24:44.115 And it turns out it's actually a dual layered shell. 628 00:24:44.483 --> 00:24:46.151 This is a top down view. 629 00:24:46.151 --> 00:24:49.187 And here you can actually see we're at the edge of the shell. 630 00:24:49.187 --> 00:24:51.389 There was a little bit of a flake up that occurred. 631 00:24:51.723 --> 00:24:53.625 And you can see there's the upper unit of the 632 00:24:53.625 --> 00:24:57.128 shell and down below is revealed your lower unit of shell. 633 00:24:57.662 --> 00:25:00.131 And that's basically shows 634 00:25:00.131 --> 00:25:02.667 us a difference in texture, a difference in composition. 635 00:25:03.134 --> 00:25:05.170 And you look a little bit closer. 636 00:25:05.170 --> 00:25:06.905 You could get a closer view 637 00:25:06.905 --> 00:25:09.407 of the upper unit of the shell top down. 638 00:25:09.941 --> 00:25:10.542 And there it is 639 00:25:10.542 --> 00:25:13.445 actually compared to a soft shell, gecko, egg, modern day. 640 00:25:13.778 --> 00:25:15.881 And you can see them compared side by side, 641 00:25:16.047 --> 00:25:17.916 somewhat similar to each other. 642 00:25:17.916 --> 00:25:19.050 You look at them, edge on it, 643 00:25:19.050 --> 00:25:20.352 can get a little bit of a better view. 644 00:25:20.352 --> 00:25:22.687 This is sort of an oblique top down view. 645 00:25:22.721 --> 00:25:24.689 You can see that flaked edge there. 646 00:25:24.689 --> 00:25:26.625 And there's a direct cross-section 647 00:25:26.625 --> 00:25:27.058 where you can see 648 00:25:27.058 --> 00:25:29.361 a beautiful distinction between the upper and lower 649 00:25:29.361 --> 00:25:31.496 layers, both in color and texture. 650 00:25:32.163 --> 00:25:34.933 And that's even more illustrated by the ECM images, 651 00:25:34.933 --> 00:25:36.167 because you can see 652 00:25:36.167 --> 00:25:39.271 sort of this haphazard, grainy texture of the upper unit 653 00:25:39.504 --> 00:25:40.272 and the lower unit. 654 00:25:40.272 --> 00:25:43.542 You could even see little reminiscent structures of the 655 00:25:44.109 --> 00:25:46.077 sort of parallel bedded 656 00:25:47.479 --> 00:25:48.647 structure that would have been there, 657 00:25:48.647 --> 00:25:50.682 sort of like the laminated structure. 658 00:25:50.682 --> 00:25:55.287 And when you look at the seam and the elemental difference 659 00:25:55.287 --> 00:25:57.355 between the upper and lower layers, the textural difference, 660 00:25:57.656 --> 00:25:59.558 it actually compares very favorably 661 00:25:59.558 --> 00:26:00.959 to the modern eggshell there as well. 662 00:26:00.959 --> 00:26:04.095 That's a soft shelled snake egg, modern day. 663 00:26:04.663 --> 00:26:08.667 And as we went through this specimen, we saw more 664 00:26:08.667 --> 00:26:09.401 and more features 665 00:26:09.401 --> 00:26:10.936 that signified that 666 00:26:10.936 --> 00:26:14.005 this had a soft shelled egg similar to the early pterosaurs. 667 00:26:14.239 --> 00:26:16.007 But now we know that that feature existed 668 00:26:16.007 --> 00:26:19.311 into the latest Cretaceous, which no one knew until now. 669 00:26:21.112 --> 00:26:23.014 And here we go. All right. 670 00:26:23.014 --> 00:26:24.983 This is another beautiful view of the skeleton. 671 00:26:24.983 --> 00:26:27.018 So this is a zoomed in view. 672 00:26:27.252 --> 00:26:30.555 We can see the shell is outlined in zinc. 673 00:26:31.289 --> 00:26:33.625 We've got strontium outlining the bones. 674 00:26:33.959 --> 00:26:35.760 And the one thing to 675 00:26:35.760 --> 00:26:36.328 remember here 676 00:26:36.328 --> 00:26:39.931 is that the bones of this are really well ossified. 677 00:26:40.131 --> 00:26:42.300 They're well-preserved. Well, ossified. 678 00:26:42.634 --> 00:26:45.904 This was probably a late term embryo based on 679 00:26:46.338 --> 00:26:47.739 how many of the bones were ossified, 680 00:26:47.739 --> 00:26:50.075 based on the articulation, based on the size. 681 00:26:50.075 --> 00:26:51.810 Probably was a late term embryo. 682 00:26:51.810 --> 00:26:54.012 And when you see that much ossification occurring 683 00:26:54.012 --> 00:26:55.013 late term, 684 00:26:55.013 --> 00:26:58.383 that probably is an indication that it would have been 685 00:26:59.551 --> 00:27:01.786 better able to fend for itself once it hatched. 686 00:27:01.987 --> 00:27:04.556 It probably was not going to be helpless once it hatched. 687 00:27:05.357 --> 00:27:07.959 And when looking at some of the dimensions 688 00:27:08.059 --> 00:27:10.762 provided by other studies, this is where ours plots in 689 00:27:11.363 --> 00:27:12.631 nature at all. 690 00:27:12.631 --> 00:27:14.532 Did a beautiful study 691 00:27:14.532 --> 00:27:16.835 on precocious reality and pterosaurs recently 692 00:27:17.102 --> 00:27:18.803 and the tannis embryo. 693 00:27:18.803 --> 00:27:20.071 Some of the 694 00:27:20.271 --> 00:27:23.408 arm dimensions of that embryo actually plots very close 695 00:27:23.408 --> 00:27:26.678 to the embryonic pterosaurs or hatchling pterosaurs, rather, 696 00:27:27.045 --> 00:27:30.215 and sort of close to the trend line 697 00:27:30.215 --> 00:27:33.251 for the non hatchling pterosaurs as well. So. 698 00:27:33.251 --> 00:27:35.120 Long story short, 699 00:27:35.120 --> 00:27:36.254 some of the preliminary data 700 00:27:36.254 --> 00:27:39.724 about the wings shows us that it is at least compatible 701 00:27:40.058 --> 00:27:41.860 with other pterosaur specimens 702 00:27:41.860 --> 00:27:43.628 that would have been capable of flight. 703 00:27:43.628 --> 00:27:46.665 This probably would have been a precocious organism, 704 00:27:47.032 --> 00:27:49.300 and that's a good advantage, 705 00:27:49.300 --> 00:27:50.769 especially if you're going to be 706 00:27:50.769 --> 00:27:52.070 in an area where things want to eat you. 707 00:27:53.171 --> 00:27:54.372 That's how big the thing would have been 708 00:27:54.372 --> 00:27:56.975 when it was hatched. So this is the first reconstruction 709 00:27:57.175 --> 00:27:58.843 based on the fossil. 710 00:27:58.843 --> 00:28:02.280 And this shows the articulated, reconstructed skeleton. 711 00:28:02.947 --> 00:28:04.816 The bones that were not present in 712 00:28:04.816 --> 00:28:06.117 the original were reconstructed 713 00:28:06.117 --> 00:28:09.154 based on the proportions of as dark and pterosaurs. 714 00:28:09.320 --> 00:28:11.623 But we had representatives of a lot of these bones. 715 00:28:11.623 --> 00:28:15.827 So it is a faithful reproduction of of how it would have looked 716 00:28:15.827 --> 00:28:18.830 if it got to hatch a little bit skinnier than if it hatched. 717 00:28:19.664 --> 00:28:21.566 But this is how this has been 718 00:28:21.566 --> 00:28:24.235 basically the size of a bat one hatched. 719 00:28:24.235 --> 00:28:26.404 So pterosaurs. Wonderful. 720 00:28:26.438 --> 00:28:28.673 Dinosaurs are even better. 721 00:28:28.907 --> 00:28:29.974 I think maybe. 722 00:28:29.974 --> 00:28:32.243 I think they're on par with each other personally. 723 00:28:32.243 --> 00:28:33.311 So let's talk about the dinosaurs. 724 00:28:33.311 --> 00:28:36.081 From the deposit back to our trusty column. 725 00:28:36.081 --> 00:28:39.417 We already have our our kapag boundary clay there. 726 00:28:40.051 --> 00:28:43.388 We've got our main concentration of fossils down there. 727 00:28:43.388 --> 00:28:45.390 Where do the dinosaurs occur in the deposit? 728 00:28:45.390 --> 00:28:47.692 That's something we really haven't gotten into much yet. 729 00:28:47.692 --> 00:28:48.827 Two places. 730 00:28:48.827 --> 00:28:52.497 First, we've got actual dinosaur remains in the deposit 731 00:28:52.564 --> 00:28:54.332 and the ones we're going to talk about here 732 00:28:54.332 --> 00:28:56.901 come from right about there in upper unit one 733 00:28:57.001 --> 00:28:59.370 at the very top of the very first search pulse. 734 00:28:59.971 --> 00:29:02.173 And then we've got a very cool thing that occurs. 735 00:29:02.507 --> 00:29:06.411 We've got trace fossils in the paleo surface right under Tanis. 736 00:29:06.711 --> 00:29:08.913 So essentially when you've got this surge 737 00:29:08.913 --> 00:29:10.815 that came in and covered that riverbank 738 00:29:10.815 --> 00:29:12.484 and covered that point bar, 739 00:29:12.484 --> 00:29:15.386 it covered the active paleo surface of the late Cretaceous, 740 00:29:15.553 --> 00:29:17.122 whatever it was there got covered. 741 00:29:17.122 --> 00:29:19.157 And in this case, we had footprints 742 00:29:19.157 --> 00:29:21.259 in that paleo surface that got covered 743 00:29:21.259 --> 00:29:23.928 by a beautiful contiguous layer of sediment. 744 00:29:24.129 --> 00:29:26.297 These were not older footprints that were re-exposed. 745 00:29:26.297 --> 00:29:29.067 These are not footprints that had formed any other way. 746 00:29:29.067 --> 00:29:31.169 This is latest Cretaceous material. 747 00:29:32.470 --> 00:29:34.205 And here's how that shakes out. 748 00:29:34.205 --> 00:29:36.274 So at right, you can actually see this 749 00:29:36.274 --> 00:29:37.709 beautiful angled paleo screen. 750 00:29:37.709 --> 00:29:39.811 You actually see the angle of that point bar. 751 00:29:40.512 --> 00:29:43.047 And this is the exposed surface because it's trampled 752 00:29:43.047 --> 00:29:44.282 all over the place. It's not smooth. 753 00:29:44.282 --> 00:29:45.750 It's like a game trail. 754 00:29:45.750 --> 00:29:46.251 It's almost like you 755 00:29:46.251 --> 00:29:48.286 go to a cow ranch or something today 756 00:29:48.286 --> 00:29:50.655 and then that is directly overlain by that 757 00:29:51.322 --> 00:29:54.492 veneer of the surge deposit, very different lithology 758 00:29:54.926 --> 00:29:58.863 and the basil sands of that surge deposit 759 00:29:58.863 --> 00:30:02.767 fill all of those cracks and then footprints 760 00:30:03.067 --> 00:30:05.170 and totally different sedimentation. 761 00:30:05.170 --> 00:30:08.106 And when that dries just a little bit in the sun, 762 00:30:08.106 --> 00:30:09.207 it just pops right off. 763 00:30:09.207 --> 00:30:11.309 And you've got all of the beautiful tracks beneath. 764 00:30:11.943 --> 00:30:13.011 And here we've got some of them. 765 00:30:13.011 --> 00:30:17.081 There's a three toed track from one of the dinosaurs, 766 00:30:17.415 --> 00:30:20.118 and we've got the surge deposit resting right on top. 767 00:30:20.552 --> 00:30:23.288 And, you know, what's the timeline of this? 768 00:30:23.288 --> 00:30:26.024 You know, what we argue is this is probably not too long 769 00:30:26.024 --> 00:30:28.126 before impact, not directly before impact. 770 00:30:28.126 --> 00:30:29.360 If it was the same day, 771 00:30:29.360 --> 00:30:30.895 it would have been a muddy deposit 772 00:30:30.895 --> 00:30:32.864 and your surge would have washed that away 773 00:30:32.864 --> 00:30:35.133 if it was too long before the impact 774 00:30:35.266 --> 00:30:37.068 in this subtropical environment 775 00:30:37.068 --> 00:30:39.137 that would have been raining all the time. 776 00:30:39.137 --> 00:30:41.673 Those would not have lasted well in the record. 777 00:30:41.673 --> 00:30:45.510 So basically they would have left these tracks in the mud. 778 00:30:45.677 --> 00:30:47.612 The mud would have dried for long enough 779 00:30:47.612 --> 00:30:49.614 that they would not have been washed away by the surge, 780 00:30:50.148 --> 00:30:51.249 but it wouldn't have been too long. 781 00:30:51.249 --> 00:30:53.585 So we're talking weeks to months, probably. 782 00:30:54.552 --> 00:30:56.754 Near some of those beautiful tracks, theropod 783 00:30:56.754 --> 00:30:58.389 dinosaur tracks. 784 00:30:58.389 --> 00:31:00.925 These are the carnivorous dinosaurs. 785 00:31:00.925 --> 00:31:02.427 Dave Burnham's hand for scale. 786 00:31:02.427 --> 00:31:02.660 Next, 787 00:31:02.660 --> 00:31:04.863 that beautiful trade, tactile print there we got on 788 00:31:04.896 --> 00:31:06.631 at the moment over there. 789 00:31:06.631 --> 00:31:09.033 So we've got the meat eaters represented. 790 00:31:09.701 --> 00:31:12.937 These are probably from herbivorous dinosaurs, 791 00:31:12.937 --> 00:31:15.340 but they're not yet determined which taxa they're from. 792 00:31:15.340 --> 00:31:16.241 But, you know, 793 00:31:16.241 --> 00:31:17.876 the fact of the matter is, 794 00:31:17.876 --> 00:31:19.911 we've got a diverse assortment of dinosaurs, 795 00:31:20.111 --> 00:31:20.478 so we don't 796 00:31:20.478 --> 00:31:23.615 necessarily have to identify the specific taxa right now. 797 00:31:23.815 --> 00:31:25.683 We've got to identify more fat types. 798 00:31:25.683 --> 00:31:27.619 And that gives us an idea of species richness. 799 00:31:27.619 --> 00:31:30.355 You know, how rich were the dinosaurs right at the end? 800 00:31:30.588 --> 00:31:32.557 This gives us a very good idea. 801 00:31:32.557 --> 00:31:33.091 Not only that, 802 00:31:33.091 --> 00:31:36.728 we also have infant dinosaur tracks, so infant hadrosaur. 803 00:31:36.928 --> 00:31:38.196 And we've got infant either 804 00:31:38.196 --> 00:31:40.865 serotypes in or it could possibly be mammal, 805 00:31:41.566 --> 00:31:44.202 but it's probably Sarah Thompson based on the man's prints. 806 00:31:44.569 --> 00:31:46.271 And when you look at the scale, these things are about 807 00:31:46.271 --> 00:31:48.373 the size of a silver dollar or a golf ball. 808 00:31:48.573 --> 00:31:49.774 Very, very small. 809 00:31:49.774 --> 00:31:52.176 That's from a baby that would be about that big 810 00:31:52.176 --> 00:31:55.680 and that would have been from that year's breeding season. 811 00:31:55.880 --> 00:31:56.981 So those are babies 812 00:31:56.981 --> 00:31:59.150 from the last breeding season of the Cretaceous. 813 00:31:59.150 --> 00:32:01.219 And you know that they were living there 814 00:32:01.452 --> 00:32:02.820 not too long before the surge. 815 00:32:04.522 --> 00:32:07.225 So about the triceratops. 816 00:32:07.225 --> 00:32:08.626 Yes, they existed in the area 817 00:32:08.626 --> 00:32:10.795 and yes, they died in the area as well. 818 00:32:10.795 --> 00:32:13.798 So while excavating into the surge deposit, 819 00:32:14.265 --> 00:32:17.368 we identified some soft tissue associated with those. 820 00:32:17.635 --> 00:32:21.773 So we ordered reported a partial hip from a set of topsy 821 00:32:21.773 --> 00:32:24.108 and in that deposit and some soft tissue associated. 822 00:32:24.509 --> 00:32:25.510 Well we wanted to go back 823 00:32:25.510 --> 00:32:28.813 and find more if there was more there and more there was. 824 00:32:29.547 --> 00:32:30.615 Here's Riley. 825 00:32:30.615 --> 00:32:34.953 We're one of the grad students at FSU at initial contact 826 00:32:34.953 --> 00:32:38.856 with this beautiful, scaly pattern, from what we now know 827 00:32:38.856 --> 00:32:40.024 is Sarah Thompson. 828 00:32:40.024 --> 00:32:42.527 At that point, we knew it was from a large dinosaur. 829 00:32:42.527 --> 00:32:43.227 And here we have 830 00:32:43.227 --> 00:32:45.463 Lauren virtually continuing that excavation 831 00:32:45.630 --> 00:32:47.432 and this protuberance on the top of the very, 832 00:32:47.432 --> 00:32:48.866 very large scale 833 00:32:48.866 --> 00:32:51.536 that is very similar to what you would see in triceratops. 834 00:32:51.769 --> 00:32:53.471 I've not seen it in any other Sarah autopsy. 835 00:32:53.471 --> 00:32:56.341 And personally, it's almost certainly from a triceratops. 836 00:32:56.507 --> 00:32:58.409 Like, oh, well, how much is actually there? 837 00:32:59.377 --> 00:33:01.813 We ended up getting lots of skin from this animal. 838 00:33:01.980 --> 00:33:04.549 We got a selection of bones, which shows us that 839 00:33:04.549 --> 00:33:07.051 we had an associated skeleton at one point in time. 840 00:33:07.652 --> 00:33:09.787 And that animal probably died right there, 841 00:33:09.787 --> 00:33:12.090 probably was not transported in like we originally thought 842 00:33:12.390 --> 00:33:14.058 with that many bones representing 843 00:33:14.058 --> 00:33:16.728 that much of the skeleton know probably not transported in 844 00:33:17.228 --> 00:33:18.796 but died before the impact. 845 00:33:18.796 --> 00:33:20.932 This was not something that was part of the 846 00:33:20.932 --> 00:33:22.967 asteroid impact at the end. 847 00:33:22.967 --> 00:33:24.168 We had a lot of decay. 848 00:33:24.168 --> 00:33:25.870 The bones were disarticulated 849 00:33:25.870 --> 00:33:29.640 and this animal probably died weeks, two months before impact. 850 00:33:29.707 --> 00:33:31.709 Again, like with the trackways, 851 00:33:31.709 --> 00:33:34.312 you're not going to have this die years before impact 852 00:33:34.512 --> 00:33:37.115 because all that soft tissue would have been decayed away. 853 00:33:37.448 --> 00:33:40.051 You would not have had an opportunity to rework it. 854 00:33:40.051 --> 00:33:42.353 So it was not a fossil at that time and reworked. 855 00:33:42.353 --> 00:33:44.856 So we're looking at probably weeks to months before impact. 856 00:33:45.089 --> 00:33:46.491 So sadly, 857 00:33:46.491 --> 00:33:50.028 that was not something that died in the impact search. 858 00:33:50.595 --> 00:33:53.731 But we did find something that probably was. 859 00:33:54.499 --> 00:33:56.667 So here's some of the new stuff. 860 00:33:56.667 --> 00:33:58.069 We've got Dave Burnham's thumb 861 00:33:58.069 --> 00:34:01.372 for scale next to soft tissue associated with bones 862 00:34:01.839 --> 00:34:04.909 that later turned out to be from a dinosaur. 863 00:34:05.343 --> 00:34:07.979 And after much digging, this is what the sediment 864 00:34:07.979 --> 00:34:09.313 looks like when you start. 865 00:34:09.313 --> 00:34:12.316 You know, it's really this awful mess 866 00:34:12.316 --> 00:34:13.584 and you have to make sense of this 867 00:34:13.584 --> 00:34:16.320 and you have to do a very detailed excavation over time. 868 00:34:16.954 --> 00:34:18.022 We ended up revealing 869 00:34:19.023 --> 00:34:22.326 a herbivorous dinosaur in that deposit, and here we are 870 00:34:22.326 --> 00:34:24.395 delineating the block with a herbivorous dinosaur. 871 00:34:24.429 --> 00:34:26.564 There's actually a palm frond over here, 872 00:34:26.564 --> 00:34:28.699 and we're delineating the creature. 873 00:34:28.699 --> 00:34:30.868 This is the outline of the rear leg. 874 00:34:30.868 --> 00:34:34.072 So we have the thigh going to the calf. 875 00:34:34.072 --> 00:34:35.706 We've got the gastrocnemius would have been there. 876 00:34:35.706 --> 00:34:38.943 We've got the ankle and the toes all the way down to the claws. 877 00:34:39.510 --> 00:34:43.081 And this animal was preserved in such a way 878 00:34:43.414 --> 00:34:44.715 that you had these 879 00:34:44.715 --> 00:34:46.851 three dimensional skin impressions 880 00:34:46.851 --> 00:34:48.920 over the articulated skeleton, 881 00:34:48.920 --> 00:34:52.356 meaning this was not decayed prior to impact. 882 00:34:52.356 --> 00:34:54.258 It was not decayed prior to deposition. 883 00:34:54.258 --> 00:34:56.060 It was beautifully preserved. 884 00:34:56.060 --> 00:34:58.029 And we did not know exactly what it was we know 885 00:34:58.029 --> 00:34:59.464 was a herbivorous dinosaur. 886 00:34:59.464 --> 00:35:00.731 We narrowed it down. 887 00:35:00.731 --> 00:35:02.934 It's probably either from a packing surplus store 888 00:35:03.067 --> 00:35:04.802 or a vessel, a saw. 889 00:35:04.802 --> 00:35:05.336 So those are two 890 00:35:05.336 --> 00:35:08.406 herbivorous dinosaurs, sort of like a gazelle echo more 891 00:35:08.406 --> 00:35:09.841 from the Hell Creek landscape. 892 00:35:09.841 --> 00:35:12.777 And they would have been gorgeous little creatures, 893 00:35:12.777 --> 00:35:15.346 but we weren't quite sure which type it was. 894 00:35:15.980 --> 00:35:17.915 So we dug deeper, 895 00:35:17.915 --> 00:35:20.751 figuratively speaking, and did some micro CT work. 896 00:35:20.785 --> 00:35:24.288 These are micro TS, literally a digital dissection 897 00:35:24.555 --> 00:35:26.023 of this dinosaur. 898 00:35:26.023 --> 00:35:28.259 So this is like a dinosaur CSI. 899 00:35:28.259 --> 00:35:31.295 This is the beautifully articulated toe of that dinosaur 900 00:35:31.462 --> 00:35:34.232 inside the three dimensional fossil skin envelope. 901 00:35:34.432 --> 00:35:36.267 So you've got all the digits of the toe, 902 00:35:36.267 --> 00:35:39.370 you've got the claw here, you've got the ankle at right. 903 00:35:39.370 --> 00:35:40.872 You can see the leg 904 00:35:40.872 --> 00:35:42.140 partially flexed 905 00:35:42.140 --> 00:35:44.308 and you can see some breaks in the leg 906 00:35:44.308 --> 00:35:45.943 that are from Fossilization. 907 00:35:45.943 --> 00:35:48.112 But there are some green stick fractures in that. 908 00:35:48.112 --> 00:35:50.781 Those green stick fractures are from the time of death 909 00:35:50.781 --> 00:35:53.050 before Fossilization So it actually had trauma 910 00:35:53.384 --> 00:35:55.052 before Fossilization 911 00:35:55.052 --> 00:35:56.053 And this 912 00:35:56.053 --> 00:35:58.990 turns out to be from a dinosaur called a festival source. 913 00:35:59.157 --> 00:36:01.125 That's what this thing was from. 914 00:36:01.125 --> 00:36:04.462 And here we've got a compound fracture of the femur 915 00:36:04.462 --> 00:36:05.930 from before death, 916 00:36:05.930 --> 00:36:08.399 and we've got all these beautiful skin impressions 917 00:36:08.633 --> 00:36:08.799 there. 918 00:36:08.799 --> 00:36:11.102 We've got the top of the foot with these overlapping 919 00:36:11.102 --> 00:36:13.104 screw scales like you'd see in a chicken 920 00:36:13.337 --> 00:36:16.641 or an ostrich foot today, just like that. 921 00:36:17.074 --> 00:36:20.111 And here we have it, 66 million years old, 922 00:36:20.344 --> 00:36:23.948 preserved in this dinosaur that most likely experienced 923 00:36:23.948 --> 00:36:26.083 the worst day that a dinosaur ever could experience. 924 00:36:26.250 --> 00:36:28.052 That dinosaur probably witnessed 925 00:36:28.052 --> 00:36:30.254 the impact event in its own special way. 926 00:36:31.189 --> 00:36:33.324 That's also teaching us new things about this resource, 927 00:36:33.491 --> 00:36:35.526 in addition to teaching us about the impact. 928 00:36:35.526 --> 00:36:37.361 Because the scale patterns we're seeing on 929 00:36:37.361 --> 00:36:39.697 this leg are scale patterns we've never seen before 930 00:36:39.864 --> 00:36:41.599 in a herbivorous dinosaur. 931 00:36:41.599 --> 00:36:44.602 So we're able to actually reconstruct better 932 00:36:44.602 --> 00:36:48.306 than before the appearance of the leg of a Tesla store, 933 00:36:48.639 --> 00:36:49.674 because we've got these 934 00:36:49.674 --> 00:36:51.576 very elongated, tubercular scales, 935 00:36:51.576 --> 00:36:52.743 which probably would have 936 00:36:52.743 --> 00:36:55.880 equated to some sort of a pattern of color 937 00:36:55.880 --> 00:36:57.582 or something like that in the animal. 938 00:36:57.582 --> 00:36:59.116 They at least would have been a texture pattern 939 00:36:59.116 --> 00:37:00.751 that would be visible on the animal, 940 00:37:00.751 --> 00:37:02.420 possibly a form of camouflage. 941 00:37:02.420 --> 00:37:04.021 No one knew they had that before. 942 00:37:04.021 --> 00:37:06.023 So because of the preservation here, 943 00:37:06.023 --> 00:37:07.525 we're actually able to determine 944 00:37:07.525 --> 00:37:08.926 new things about this dinosaur. 945 00:37:10.061 --> 00:37:12.763 And then we have to go through our list of our dinucci. 946 00:37:12.964 --> 00:37:14.966 What caused the death of this thing? 947 00:37:15.833 --> 00:37:18.102 We don't want to jump to conclusions and say, Yeah, 948 00:37:18.102 --> 00:37:20.238 yeah, this is something that was brought down by the impact. 949 00:37:20.238 --> 00:37:20.838 We're scientists. 950 00:37:20.838 --> 00:37:22.540 We want to figure out and weed out 951 00:37:22.540 --> 00:37:24.742 what is incompatible with what we're looking at. 952 00:37:24.742 --> 00:37:27.812 Predation could have been preyed upon. 953 00:37:27.812 --> 00:37:28.346 You know, 954 00:37:28.346 --> 00:37:32.250 lots of herbivores are in this case, it's not well-supported 955 00:37:32.250 --> 00:37:33.284 by the fossil. 956 00:37:33.284 --> 00:37:34.485 We don't see tooth marks. 957 00:37:34.485 --> 00:37:36.654 We don't see anything that indicates that it was 958 00:37:37.388 --> 00:37:39.423 either partially or completely consumed. 959 00:37:39.423 --> 00:37:39.824 You know, 960 00:37:39.824 --> 00:37:41.292 we don't see evidence 961 00:37:41.292 --> 00:37:44.862 that a predator engaged this animal or shed the teeth of 962 00:37:44.862 --> 00:37:46.530 the predator. You see those sometimes two. 963 00:37:46.530 --> 00:37:48.032 We don't see that. 964 00:37:48.232 --> 00:37:49.066 How about disease? 965 00:37:49.066 --> 00:37:49.834 Was a disease 966 00:37:49.834 --> 00:37:51.335 could of died right before impact 967 00:37:51.335 --> 00:37:53.904 maybe a day before a week before a disease or animal? 968 00:37:54.639 --> 00:37:57.908 Well, Paul Barrett and other people 969 00:37:57.908 --> 00:37:59.710 actually have examined the specimen, 970 00:37:59.710 --> 00:38:03.314 and they they agree with us that there's no obvious 971 00:38:03.314 --> 00:38:05.650 evidence of disease associated with the leg. 972 00:38:06.384 --> 00:38:08.452 It looks like it was an animal in good health. 973 00:38:08.452 --> 00:38:10.921 It looks like the animal probably, 974 00:38:10.921 --> 00:38:12.990 you know, was just a normal average 975 00:38:12.990 --> 00:38:14.592 sessile sort just living out its life. 976 00:38:14.592 --> 00:38:16.861 We don't see any obvious signs of a bad disease, 977 00:38:16.861 --> 00:38:17.995 so probably not disease. 978 00:38:19.930 --> 00:38:20.998 Okay, how about trauma? 979 00:38:20.998 --> 00:38:22.900 I just mentioned trauma. We do have trauma. 980 00:38:22.900 --> 00:38:24.802 Yes, we've got green stick fractures. 981 00:38:24.802 --> 00:38:27.071 We've got fractures that occurred at the time 982 00:38:27.071 --> 00:38:28.272 or right around the time of death. 983 00:38:28.272 --> 00:38:29.106 Good. Okay. 984 00:38:29.106 --> 00:38:31.542 That gives us a little bit of evidence there. 985 00:38:31.542 --> 00:38:33.778 And could this have been contemporaneous? 986 00:38:34.512 --> 00:38:35.546 It's compatible. 987 00:38:35.546 --> 00:38:38.482 Now, as a scientist, I'm not going to say yes, 100%. 988 00:38:38.549 --> 00:38:41.352 We do have an animal that died in the impact search. 989 00:38:41.652 --> 00:38:43.854 Is it compatible? Absolutely. 990 00:38:43.854 --> 00:38:45.790 Because we've already weeded out some of the most 991 00:38:45.790 --> 00:38:48.392 obvious causes of death and it's compatible 992 00:38:48.592 --> 00:38:51.629 that it could possibly plausibly have been 993 00:38:52.129 --> 00:38:54.298 a victim of that impact surge. 994 00:38:54.632 --> 00:38:56.667 It did not decay before burial. 995 00:38:56.667 --> 00:38:58.903 That's that's one good point of evidence. 996 00:38:59.837 --> 00:39:03.641 So that is really kind of an exciting thing to think about. 997 00:39:03.641 --> 00:39:05.910 This creature could actually have experienced that event 998 00:39:06.210 --> 00:39:09.714 this rather than thinking, Oh yeah, the impact caused all 999 00:39:09.714 --> 00:39:10.948 this extinction. 1000 00:39:10.948 --> 00:39:13.651 You're thinking, Wow, how did the impact affect 1001 00:39:13.651 --> 00:39:15.186 the life of this single creature? 1002 00:39:15.186 --> 00:39:17.221 And that brings it down to kind of like a human level. 1003 00:39:18.189 --> 00:39:19.623 Now back to the impact itself. 1004 00:39:19.623 --> 00:39:22.426 Let's talk about what the impact tells us about the impact. 1005 00:39:23.494 --> 00:39:25.162 The ejecta spirals, the beautiful ones 1006 00:39:25.162 --> 00:39:28.966 that are totally preserved in glass, 1007 00:39:28.966 --> 00:39:31.602 that are not altered at all into clay, 1008 00:39:31.602 --> 00:39:33.871 have a little bit more to tell us. 1009 00:39:33.871 --> 00:39:34.772 They're not just pretty. 1010 00:39:34.772 --> 00:39:36.841 They actually have data to provide. 1011 00:39:36.841 --> 00:39:38.576 This is the exterior. We actually still have 1012 00:39:38.576 --> 00:39:40.544 some pieces of amber adhering to those. 1013 00:39:40.544 --> 00:39:43.013 There's the interior with some beautiful gas bubbles 1014 00:39:43.013 --> 00:39:46.484 in there like we typically will see in the impact melt glass. 1015 00:39:46.951 --> 00:39:50.254 I'm astounded at the beauty of the interior of this thing 1016 00:39:50.254 --> 00:39:51.889 because when you look at that glass, 1017 00:39:51.889 --> 00:39:52.590 you can just 1018 00:39:52.590 --> 00:39:54.091 imagine the day that it was flying 1019 00:39:54.091 --> 00:39:55.426 through the air out of the crater, 1020 00:39:55.426 --> 00:39:57.595 out of the atmosphere and solidifying, 1021 00:39:57.862 --> 00:39:59.797 you know, as a little piece of glass. 1022 00:39:59.797 --> 00:40:02.666 But there's stuff in there that is really important 1023 00:40:02.666 --> 00:40:05.870 to us as scientists, and that's the inclusions. 1024 00:40:06.203 --> 00:40:09.840 We found bits of rocky debris in several of these 1025 00:40:10.241 --> 00:40:11.942 that we're like, okay. 1026 00:40:11.942 --> 00:40:13.677 Just like you see an insect, an amber. 1027 00:40:13.677 --> 00:40:16.480 Now we're seeing a piece of rock inside the glass. 1028 00:40:16.680 --> 00:40:17.882 Perfectly preserved. 1029 00:40:17.882 --> 00:40:19.884 What's that going to tell us about the impact? 1030 00:40:19.884 --> 00:40:20.885 There's a little nugget there. 1031 00:40:20.885 --> 00:40:23.621 There are all these little dirty nuggets in there. 1032 00:40:23.621 --> 00:40:25.122 Every single speck 1033 00:40:25.122 --> 00:40:26.390 that takes away from this beautiful 1034 00:40:26.390 --> 00:40:28.859 clear glass is a piece of debris. 1035 00:40:28.859 --> 00:40:30.961 And that's essentially the equivalent 1036 00:40:31.262 --> 00:40:32.963 of sending someone back in time 1037 00:40:32.963 --> 00:40:35.166 with a sample vial to the point of impact, 1038 00:40:35.399 --> 00:40:37.601 collecting a sample, bottling it up 1039 00:40:37.802 --> 00:40:40.137 and perfectly preserving it for scientists right now. 1040 00:40:40.404 --> 00:40:42.373 And that's like research gold. 1041 00:40:42.373 --> 00:40:44.141 So what we found 1042 00:40:44.141 --> 00:40:46.644 is that almost all of these little un melted 1043 00:40:46.644 --> 00:40:50.881 nuggets are enriched in strontium and calcium, and 1044 00:40:50.881 --> 00:40:53.717 they are parts of the carbonate platform of the Yucatan. 1045 00:40:53.951 --> 00:40:57.154 They're part of that limestone platform that got hit 1046 00:40:57.955 --> 00:40:59.890 and got thrown into the air. 1047 00:40:59.890 --> 00:41:02.059 These are pieces that didn't melt all the way. 1048 00:41:02.059 --> 00:41:03.360 We expect that. 1049 00:41:03.360 --> 00:41:05.930 It's very cool, very amazing. 1050 00:41:05.930 --> 00:41:07.798 For all intents and purposes, those are some of the best 1051 00:41:07.798 --> 00:41:08.599 preserved pieces 1052 00:41:08.599 --> 00:41:10.134 of the Yucatan platform that got hit 1053 00:41:10.134 --> 00:41:12.837 because they haven't been weathered in 66 million years. 1054 00:41:13.304 --> 00:41:14.605 So you've got those little bits 1055 00:41:14.605 --> 00:41:16.407 of evidence from the moment of impact, 1056 00:41:16.407 --> 00:41:18.742 and it brings you kind of closer to, 1057 00:41:19.009 --> 00:41:21.145 you know, feeling like you were actually there on that day. 1058 00:41:21.178 --> 00:41:23.013 You can picture these being encapsulated 1059 00:41:23.013 --> 00:41:24.582 by the molten glass. 1060 00:41:24.582 --> 00:41:27.218 But when we were at Diamond Lightsource in Oxfordshire, 1061 00:41:27.218 --> 00:41:28.486 we found a couple of 1062 00:41:28.486 --> 00:41:30.621 of these fragments were not quite what we expected. 1063 00:41:31.255 --> 00:41:33.858 Two of the spherules had fragments in them 1064 00:41:33.858 --> 00:41:37.194 that were wildly different in composition than those others 1065 00:41:37.394 --> 00:41:38.929 that were not enriched to the calcium 1066 00:41:38.929 --> 00:41:40.831 in the strontium like we would have expected. 1067 00:41:40.831 --> 00:41:42.733 These were rich in the iron. 1068 00:41:42.733 --> 00:41:45.069 They were enriched in chromium, the Irish nickel. 1069 00:41:45.202 --> 00:41:47.238 And a few other things I'm not going to mention just yet, 1070 00:41:47.571 --> 00:41:51.141 but these fragments matched what we would expect. 1071 00:41:52.009 --> 00:41:54.712 From elsewhere, not from Earth. 1072 00:41:55.212 --> 00:41:56.213 And as we go 1073 00:41:56.213 --> 00:41:59.650 through the micro analysis, we can demonstrate that further. 1074 00:42:00.050 --> 00:42:03.587 This is an awesome view of one of those fragments. 1075 00:42:03.821 --> 00:42:07.224 We actually have a control or what appears to be a control 1076 00:42:07.424 --> 00:42:09.593 that is preserved within this brush created matrix. 1077 00:42:10.060 --> 00:42:13.531 And we have the dark region around the exterior, 1078 00:42:13.531 --> 00:42:17.401 which is likely related to the fine grained rim of the control. 1079 00:42:18.135 --> 00:42:19.737 We've got a closer view. 1080 00:42:20.771 --> 00:42:22.072 That's a much better view of the control. 1081 00:42:22.072 --> 00:42:22.840 Actually. 1082 00:42:22.840 --> 00:42:25.442 We've got some chromite along the the edge there. 1083 00:42:25.543 --> 00:42:27.945 We've got beautiful view of the brush shaded matrix, 1084 00:42:28.245 --> 00:42:34.018 really nicely formed control and probably olivine. 1085 00:42:34.285 --> 00:42:35.219 Actually, it probably is. 1086 00:42:35.219 --> 00:42:38.889 We've got enrichments of of manganese or magnesium there. 1087 00:42:39.957 --> 00:42:41.258 Beautiful brush headed matrix. 1088 00:42:41.258 --> 00:42:42.826 We got control. Control. 1089 00:42:42.826 --> 00:42:45.429 And this is our view of one of those fragments. 1090 00:42:45.763 --> 00:42:47.331 So the micro structure is going 1091 00:42:47.331 --> 00:42:49.433 to tell us a lot about where it came from. 1092 00:42:49.433 --> 00:42:49.967 And you'll be able 1093 00:42:49.967 --> 00:42:53.270 to do some of your mineralogy with your EDC data and such. 1094 00:42:53.837 --> 00:42:57.141 And the ratios of those elements to each other 1095 00:42:57.141 --> 00:42:59.810 tell you a lot about what these things are made of. 1096 00:43:00.344 --> 00:43:02.880 And obviously we don't jump to conclusions with these. 1097 00:43:02.880 --> 00:43:04.949 We let the instruments tell us what they tell us 1098 00:43:04.949 --> 00:43:07.318 and the specimen will tell us what it is. 1099 00:43:07.318 --> 00:43:12.389 So far, the data is showing us that our sample falls 1100 00:43:12.389 --> 00:43:16.994 within this region, which is the carbonaceous chondrites. 1101 00:43:17.761 --> 00:43:20.831 So most likely this particular sample 1102 00:43:21.298 --> 00:43:23.667 is allied with the carbonaceous chondrites. 1103 00:43:24.168 --> 00:43:25.803 And that's good to know 1104 00:43:25.803 --> 00:43:27.338 because that actually falls in line 1105 00:43:27.338 --> 00:43:29.607 with what Frank Kight was telling us years ago. 1106 00:43:30.341 --> 00:43:32.476 Kate, describe this sample at right, 1107 00:43:32.476 --> 00:43:36.580 which was found in the Pacific in a drill core 9000 kilometers 1108 00:43:36.580 --> 00:43:37.348 from the site. 1109 00:43:37.348 --> 00:43:39.717 That's like three times farther than Tanis, 1110 00:43:39.717 --> 00:43:40.851 and it's a little larger than mine 1111 00:43:40.851 --> 00:43:42.786 fragments, about two and a half millimeters. 1112 00:43:42.786 --> 00:43:44.622 I don't know how two and a half millimeter fragment 1113 00:43:44.622 --> 00:43:45.489 would have gotten that far, 1114 00:43:45.489 --> 00:43:48.225 but assuming this is actually from the impactor, 1115 00:43:48.892 --> 00:43:50.260 there is some data we can get from it. 1116 00:43:50.260 --> 00:43:53.430 The problem is this carbonaceous chondrites are not resilient. 1117 00:43:53.597 --> 00:43:55.232 They're not nickel iron meteorites. 1118 00:43:55.232 --> 00:43:57.701 They fall to hell in the environment. 1119 00:43:57.868 --> 00:43:59.336 They hydrate, they alter. 1120 00:43:59.336 --> 00:44:02.139 And this piece is no different. 1121 00:44:02.139 --> 00:44:05.442 That particular specimen went through 66 million years 1122 00:44:05.643 --> 00:44:07.478 of being ravaged by the ocean waters 1123 00:44:07.478 --> 00:44:08.812 and the deep sea sediments. 1124 00:44:08.812 --> 00:44:11.582 There's no original mineralogy that exists. 1125 00:44:11.582 --> 00:44:12.182 There is a lot of 1126 00:44:12.182 --> 00:44:14.952 chemical exchange with the the exterior matrix, 1127 00:44:15.285 --> 00:44:19.223 and there's no way really to tell exactly what type it is 1128 00:44:19.456 --> 00:44:21.992 except probably carbonaceous chondrite. 1129 00:44:22.326 --> 00:44:27.765 And he proposed it's probably either ac0 C.R. 1130 00:44:27.798 --> 00:44:30.567 or c m subtype carbonaceous chondrite. 1131 00:44:30.567 --> 00:44:31.068 That's good. 1132 00:44:31.068 --> 00:44:32.469 That's good to narrow it down 1133 00:44:32.469 --> 00:44:35.606 a little bit further, but still, it doesn't really give us that 1134 00:44:35.606 --> 00:44:36.640 final oomph. 1135 00:44:36.640 --> 00:44:39.043 You know, do we really know what the asteroid was? 1136 00:44:39.576 --> 00:44:41.679 And our current specimen 1137 00:44:42.513 --> 00:44:44.815 falls within this region of the graph. 1138 00:44:45.416 --> 00:44:47.918 And this is one of the many different analysis. 1139 00:44:47.918 --> 00:44:49.386 I'm not going to bore you with all of them, 1140 00:44:49.386 --> 00:44:51.889 but ours falls within that region, 1141 00:44:51.889 --> 00:44:55.492 which identifies it as most probably a CM 1142 00:44:55.826 --> 00:44:58.729 type carbonaceous chondrite, which is excellent 1143 00:44:58.729 --> 00:45:01.999 because that actually falls right within Frank Kite's range. 1144 00:45:02.332 --> 00:45:07.304 There's Frank Kite's proposed region and we go right here. 1145 00:45:07.471 --> 00:45:10.441 So we probably do have a CM carbonaceous chondrite. 1146 00:45:10.841 --> 00:45:15.112 And in addition to that, just being a phenomenally cool 1147 00:45:15.112 --> 00:45:17.014 aspect of the impact story, you're able 1148 00:45:17.014 --> 00:45:19.750 to look at a fragment, even if you haven't identified 1149 00:45:19.750 --> 00:45:23.320 that fragment and say this is a of of cosmic origin. 1150 00:45:23.754 --> 00:45:27.024 And almost certainly this is related to the bolide 1151 00:45:27.024 --> 00:45:28.492 that hit at the end of the Cretaceous. 1152 00:45:28.492 --> 00:45:30.227 That's amazing. It's phenomenal. 1153 00:45:30.227 --> 00:45:31.762 Then if you're able 1154 00:45:31.762 --> 00:45:32.830 to actually identify it 1155 00:45:32.830 --> 00:45:34.898 and we're on the road to doing that, 1156 00:45:34.898 --> 00:45:38.001 then you can actually say, Amazing, we know what it was. 1157 00:45:38.202 --> 00:45:41.672 But it's not just cool that actually has some significance 1158 00:45:42.005 --> 00:45:44.708 because when that asteroid came in, you're looking 1159 00:45:44.708 --> 00:45:47.544 at a ten kilometer diameter piece of rock. 1160 00:45:47.811 --> 00:45:50.481 The composition of that rock is not trivial. 1161 00:45:50.781 --> 00:45:52.149 The composition of that rock, 1162 00:45:52.149 --> 00:45:54.218 when it was vaporized and went into the atmosphere, 1163 00:45:54.351 --> 00:45:57.387 contributed that atmospheric perturbation 1164 00:45:57.387 --> 00:46:01.391 that contributed to whatever happened to Earth's biota . 1165 00:46:01.391 --> 00:46:04.027 So knowing what that composition was, was it high in sulfur? 1166 00:46:04.027 --> 00:46:06.263 Was it high in something else? What actually went up? 1167 00:46:06.530 --> 00:46:07.865 You can combine that with what you know 1168 00:46:07.865 --> 00:46:10.200 about the Target Rock and have a better idea 1169 00:46:10.400 --> 00:46:13.771 about the dynamics of what occurred on the day of impact 1170 00:46:13.771 --> 00:46:16.473 and why the things happened the way they did. 1171 00:46:16.874 --> 00:46:18.308 So this is an important step 1172 00:46:18.308 --> 00:46:20.310 forward in our story of understanding 1173 00:46:20.310 --> 00:46:22.379 about the entire impact event. 1174 00:46:22.746 --> 00:46:24.815 And one thing that we do know is the impact 1175 00:46:24.815 --> 00:46:27.384 did not have a very good effect on Earth's biota. 1176 00:46:28.852 --> 00:46:30.120 It was not compatible with life. 1177 00:46:30.120 --> 00:46:32.422 It led to the massive extinction. 1178 00:46:32.422 --> 00:46:34.558 I'm going to go through these very rapidly, 1179 00:46:34.558 --> 00:46:36.693 a couple of high points about this pterosaur. 1180 00:46:37.261 --> 00:46:39.062 Again, this is the first pterosaur 1181 00:46:39.062 --> 00:46:40.531 embryo from North America, 1182 00:46:40.531 --> 00:46:42.533 the first one from the late Cretaceous Worldwide, 1183 00:46:42.533 --> 00:46:44.468 the first one from Nasdaq, a pterosaur. 1184 00:46:44.468 --> 00:46:46.436 There's a lot to learn from this. 1185 00:46:46.436 --> 00:46:49.473 And also we're talking about when did the impact hit? 1186 00:46:49.473 --> 00:46:51.008 You know, the impact occurred 1187 00:46:51.008 --> 00:46:52.910 sometime in the spring, the summer months. 1188 00:46:52.910 --> 00:46:56.346 You know, we we actually just performed 1189 00:46:56.346 --> 00:46:58.949 a study that determined that's the most likely range. 1190 00:46:59.483 --> 00:47:02.152 And there are a whole bunch of vulnerabilities 1191 00:47:02.152 --> 00:47:05.889 that are inherent to that time span that are going to occur. 1192 00:47:05.923 --> 00:47:08.025 These things are over obvious. 1193 00:47:08.025 --> 00:47:09.960 They do have precocious, young, probably. 1194 00:47:09.960 --> 00:47:12.663 How does that affect now? We can actually postulate? 1195 00:47:12.663 --> 00:47:14.832 Well, you know, we can figure out 1196 00:47:15.532 --> 00:47:18.235 different ways that could have been affected by the impact. 1197 00:47:18.602 --> 00:47:21.171 We look at the vessel saw, basically 1198 00:47:21.338 --> 00:47:24.208 we've got a dinosaur at the KPC boundary. 1199 00:47:24.208 --> 00:47:25.809 It closes the gap and usually you don't 1200 00:47:25.809 --> 00:47:28.145 find dinosaurs right at the big boundary. 1201 00:47:28.278 --> 00:47:29.913 You've got a significant gap. 1202 00:47:29.913 --> 00:47:31.715 This closes that gap completely. 1203 00:47:31.715 --> 00:47:32.182 In addition, 1204 00:47:32.182 --> 00:47:32.716 we've got 1205 00:47:32.716 --> 00:47:34.184 details about that particular 1206 00:47:34.184 --> 00:47:36.987 type of dinosaur that weren't available before 1207 00:47:37.588 --> 00:47:39.389 and this could have been killed. 1208 00:47:39.389 --> 00:47:40.123 By the impact. 1209 00:47:40.123 --> 00:47:41.925 That's some significance right there. 1210 00:47:41.925 --> 00:47:43.393 Very, very interesting. 1211 00:47:43.393 --> 00:47:46.964 And also, if we do histological studies on the bones, 1212 00:47:47.130 --> 00:47:48.665 we can work backwards 1213 00:47:48.665 --> 00:47:50.734 and find out what things were like 1214 00:47:50.734 --> 00:47:52.803 leading up to the impact in the environment, 1215 00:47:52.803 --> 00:47:54.538 because the growth lines 1216 00:47:54.538 --> 00:47:57.341 in those bones give us a record of that animal. 1217 00:47:57.341 --> 00:47:59.576 Then, of course, the fragment is a beautiful map 1218 00:47:59.810 --> 00:48:02.179 of one of the fragments inside the sphere. 1219 00:48:02.179 --> 00:48:03.981 And, of course, that fragment is going to tell us 1220 00:48:03.981 --> 00:48:06.049 more about the dynamics of the impact event. 1221 00:48:06.049 --> 00:48:09.419 What the asteroid was made of and possibly how it could have 1222 00:48:09.620 --> 00:48:10.854 affected life on earth. 1223 00:48:10.854 --> 00:48:13.891 And this gets us so excited 1224 00:48:14.224 --> 00:48:18.495 because we know the asteroid caused the extinction 1225 00:48:18.495 --> 00:48:19.663 at the end of the Cretaceous. 1226 00:48:19.663 --> 00:48:22.633 To see a piece of 1227 00:48:22.633 --> 00:48:25.669 the culprit is just a goosebump, bumpy experience. 1228 00:48:26.970 --> 00:48:29.006 And lastly, 1229 00:48:29.006 --> 00:48:29.907 the story that's 1230 00:48:29.907 --> 00:48:30.674 kind of brought forward 1231 00:48:30.674 --> 00:48:32.943 about this whole event in the Cretaceous 1232 00:48:33.810 --> 00:48:34.778 kind of comes full circle. 1233 00:48:34.778 --> 00:48:37.481 It's not just about the late Cretaceous. 1234 00:48:37.481 --> 00:48:39.383 It's not just about what happened back then. 1235 00:48:39.383 --> 00:48:41.952 It relates to today as well, 1236 00:48:42.185 --> 00:48:45.455 the mode and tempo of the extinction event. 1237 00:48:45.889 --> 00:48:48.992 It is very, very similar to what we see today. The. 1238 00:48:50.060 --> 00:48:51.428 Rapid. 1239 00:48:52.496 --> 00:48:55.299 Damaging effects to the ecology today mirror 1240 00:48:55.599 --> 00:48:59.102 to a startling extent what we see in the fossil record 1241 00:48:59.269 --> 00:49:00.437 for how fast 1242 00:49:00.437 --> 00:49:03.206 the extinction event occurred in the Cretaceous, much more 1243 00:49:03.206 --> 00:49:05.876 so than the other mass extinctions in Earth's history. 1244 00:49:06.243 --> 00:49:11.315 So that is a startling thing, and obviously it's up to us. 1245 00:49:11.415 --> 00:49:13.517 We have the capability of doing something 1246 00:49:13.517 --> 00:49:15.619 about that and learning from the fossil record. 1247 00:49:15.719 --> 00:49:17.754 And it is indeed the fossil record 1248 00:49:17.754 --> 00:49:21.491 that is our way to learn how to do something about it. 1249 00:49:21.525 --> 00:49:23.527 We are the only species on earth 1250 00:49:23.527 --> 00:49:25.696 that's ever been able to learn from this. 1251 00:49:25.696 --> 00:49:27.531 It's up to us to do it. 1252 00:49:27.531 --> 00:49:30.634 And the fossil record is our way of looking back 1253 00:49:30.634 --> 00:49:32.269 into that window of time 1254 00:49:32.269 --> 00:49:34.938 and actually seeing how to Earth's biota. 1255 00:49:34.972 --> 00:49:37.507 How do these animals and plants, 1256 00:49:37.507 --> 00:49:39.676 how do they react to a global scale hazard? 1257 00:49:40.010 --> 00:49:41.178 It's not a simulation. 1258 00:49:41.178 --> 00:49:43.146 It's not a question mark. It's not a hypothesis. 1259 00:49:43.146 --> 00:49:44.281 You're actually looking 1260 00:49:44.281 --> 00:49:47.150 through time at the fossil record to see what happens. 1261 00:49:47.317 --> 00:49:49.553 That's our best way of understanding 1262 00:49:49.886 --> 00:49:52.022 what's happening today, what could happen today, 1263 00:49:52.255 --> 00:49:54.091 and how could we have an effect on that. 1264 00:49:54.091 --> 00:49:55.926 So that's our obligation. 1265 00:49:55.926 --> 00:49:57.627 And with that, I will thank 1266 00:49:57.627 --> 00:49:59.863 the following individuals and all of you as well. 1267 00:50:07.304 --> 00:50:08.271 Thank you so much. 1268 00:50:08.271 --> 00:50:09.740 Thank you so much for your presentation. 1269 00:50:09.740 --> 00:50:10.140 Thank you. 1270 00:50:10.140 --> 00:50:11.708 I think a lot of you understand 1271 00:50:11.708 --> 00:50:14.678 now that a number of us had trouble sleeping last night. 1272 00:50:15.579 --> 00:50:17.147 These results are so exciting. 1273 00:50:17.147 --> 00:50:18.215 I think you can say that 1274 00:50:18.215 --> 00:50:20.050 these are some of the most significant results 1275 00:50:20.050 --> 00:50:21.151 in our century 1276 00:50:21.151 --> 00:50:23.754 and to to really nail down what happened on that day 1277 00:50:24.021 --> 00:50:24.788 when we were struck 1278 00:50:24.788 --> 00:50:28.458 by this tremendous now better identified asteroid. 1279 00:50:29.259 --> 00:50:30.727 So that was incredibly exciting. 1280 00:50:30.727 --> 00:50:32.095 Thank you so much for your presentation. 1281 00:50:32.095 --> 00:50:34.331 We will have questions, questions and answers later. 1282 00:50:34.331 --> 00:50:35.465 So we'll take a break now. 1283 00:50:35.465 --> 00:50:36.233 Thank you. 1284 00:50:42.039 --> 00:50:44.207 Hello and welcome to NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 1285 00:50:44.274 --> 00:50:45.375 My name is Michelle Thaler, 1286 00:50:45.375 --> 00:50:47.310 and I'm here to host the question and answer period 1287 00:50:47.310 --> 00:50:49.112 about some extraordinary findings 1288 00:50:49.112 --> 00:50:51.415 about the date that the asteroid hit 1289 00:50:51.415 --> 00:50:53.050 that made the dinosaurs go extinct. 1290 00:50:53.050 --> 00:50:55.085 And we have Robert DePalma here 1291 00:50:55.085 --> 00:50:58.522 in his team, have just had some incredible discoveries. 1292 00:50:58.622 --> 00:51:00.390 I'm still speechless, I have to say. 1293 00:51:00.390 --> 00:51:02.392 There were so many things that when you were talking, 1294 00:51:02.392 --> 00:51:04.828 we were just emotionally reacting to people. 1295 00:51:04.995 --> 00:51:06.463 I saw I saw Christa was 1296 00:51:06.463 --> 00:51:08.732 she was nodding and she was going, oh, my God. 1297 00:51:08.732 --> 00:51:11.234 There was just amazing evidence today presented 1298 00:51:11.435 --> 00:51:14.771 that you have captured the moment that asteroid hit. 1299 00:51:14.771 --> 00:51:17.941 The ejecta came, seismic waves ripped through the planet 1300 00:51:18.241 --> 00:51:20.677 and some of these organisms were swept together and died. 1301 00:51:20.710 --> 00:51:21.411 I mean, it's amazing to be 1302 00:51:21.411 --> 00:51:23.380 standing in front of that right here. 1303 00:51:23.380 --> 00:51:24.481 So this question, 1304 00:51:24.481 --> 00:51:26.716 the question answer period can start many different ways. 1305 00:51:26.716 --> 00:51:28.885 But one of the things that I wanted to begin with 1306 00:51:28.885 --> 00:51:31.955 is that just putting the science aside for a second. 1307 00:51:32.222 --> 00:51:32.589 There's 1308 00:51:32.589 --> 00:51:34.291 this quite interesting personal story 1309 00:51:34.291 --> 00:51:35.492 here for you, too, 1310 00:51:35.492 --> 00:51:38.161 because as you began to look into this deposit. 1311 00:51:38.462 --> 00:51:39.463 Well, for one thing, I understand 1312 00:51:39.463 --> 00:51:41.331 this deposit was thought it was kind of confusing. 1313 00:51:41.331 --> 00:51:42.766 People didn't know what to do with it. 1314 00:51:42.766 --> 00:51:44.167 And so a lot of scientists kind of 1315 00:51:44.167 --> 00:51:46.303 didn't want to work with it, didn't seem very clear. 1316 00:51:46.670 --> 00:51:47.804 You stuck with it, 1317 00:51:47.804 --> 00:51:50.006 but your findings were controversial 1318 00:51:50.006 --> 00:51:52.109 and you got some some pushback about. 1319 00:51:52.142 --> 00:51:54.144 Can you tell us a bit about that, that journey, 1320 00:51:54.144 --> 00:51:56.546 about people being skeptical and now people being 1321 00:51:56.713 --> 00:51:58.348 very excited about these? 1322 00:51:58.348 --> 00:52:00.050 Science is about being skeptical. 1323 00:52:00.050 --> 00:52:02.052 You really have to ask questions 1324 00:52:02.052 --> 00:52:04.254 and don't take anything on face value. 1325 00:52:04.254 --> 00:52:06.756 That's what happened with Alvarez and everybody else 1326 00:52:06.756 --> 00:52:09.726 when they first proposed that an impact occurred. 1327 00:52:09.993 --> 00:52:11.661 Nobody agreed with it. 1328 00:52:11.661 --> 00:52:13.697 And if everybody agreed with something, 1329 00:52:13.697 --> 00:52:14.998 I'd be kind of worried. 1330 00:52:14.998 --> 00:52:16.032 That's that's when people weren't 1331 00:52:16.032 --> 00:52:17.467 really thinking critically about it. 1332 00:52:17.467 --> 00:52:20.770 In this case, what you do and what you do 1333 00:52:20.770 --> 00:52:24.174 as a scientist is you find what evidence lines up. 1334 00:52:24.508 --> 00:52:26.843 What does it mean and what does it tell you? 1335 00:52:26.877 --> 00:52:28.111 You don't tell the story, 1336 00:52:28.111 --> 00:52:31.748 the evidence, the fossils, the data that tells the story. 1337 00:52:32.048 --> 00:52:34.818 And the longer you work on it and the more of all of 1338 00:52:34.818 --> 00:52:37.487 those items you collect and you are able to interpret, 1339 00:52:37.888 --> 00:52:40.790 they are actually forwarding that information forward. 1340 00:52:41.124 --> 00:52:43.960 And in this case, all of the data, 1341 00:52:44.194 --> 00:52:45.662 the information that different teams 1342 00:52:45.662 --> 00:52:47.731 are putting together, our team is interpreting 1343 00:52:47.731 --> 00:52:50.233 based on these specimens, all it's coming together 1344 00:52:50.467 --> 00:52:52.903 to sort of support this rich story 1345 00:52:53.170 --> 00:52:55.672 that is linked with the end of the Cretaceous, 1346 00:52:55.672 --> 00:52:57.674 the end of that time of dinosaurs. 1347 00:52:58.742 --> 00:52:59.643 It's a very 1348 00:52:59.643 --> 00:53:00.577 calm and very 1349 00:53:00.577 --> 00:53:03.246 measured scientific response, I have to say. 1350 00:53:03.246 --> 00:53:06.249 To me, it doesn't match the excitement 1351 00:53:06.249 --> 00:53:07.150 I feel about this. 1352 00:53:07.150 --> 00:53:09.553 The joy, I have to say, 1353 00:53:09.553 --> 00:53:11.021 a bunch of us were just jumping up and down 1354 00:53:11.021 --> 00:53:13.223 when we heard about this and what was going to be presented. 1355 00:53:13.223 --> 00:53:15.492 So there's also an emotional story about, 1356 00:53:15.692 --> 00:53:18.061 you know, as you began to piece these things together, 1357 00:53:18.595 --> 00:53:20.697 realizing what you had found. 1358 00:53:20.697 --> 00:53:23.667 Can you take us a little bit on that as well? 1359 00:53:24.834 --> 00:53:27.537 When looking at the fossil record, usually you're looking 1360 00:53:27.537 --> 00:53:31.374 at really long timescales, millions of years, tens 1361 00:53:31.374 --> 00:53:32.809 of thousands of years. 1362 00:53:32.809 --> 00:53:36.446 And really, as paleontologists, we are passionate 1363 00:53:36.446 --> 00:53:37.414 about the animals. 1364 00:53:37.414 --> 00:53:39.349 I am passionate about the animals 1365 00:53:39.349 --> 00:53:41.618 and whatever was existing at that time. 1366 00:53:41.618 --> 00:53:44.254 So whenever I'm able to look at something 1367 00:53:44.254 --> 00:53:47.057 and kind of have a fossil in front of me 1368 00:53:47.357 --> 00:53:49.392 and be able to tell what that animal experience, 1369 00:53:49.426 --> 00:53:50.827 what was its life like? 1370 00:53:50.827 --> 00:53:53.263 What did what happened during its life? 1371 00:53:53.263 --> 00:53:54.097 How did it die? 1372 00:53:55.065 --> 00:53:57.367 That's a special thing because it gives you a window 1373 00:53:57.367 --> 00:53:59.869 into that animal's life. There's one creature 1374 00:53:59.936 --> 00:54:01.738 experiencing what another creature did. 1375 00:54:01.738 --> 00:54:03.173 And in this case, 1376 00:54:03.173 --> 00:54:04.341 all of these animals 1377 00:54:04.341 --> 00:54:06.676 that are just tumbled together in this deposit 1378 00:54:07.244 --> 00:54:09.980 sort of had what I like to refer to as a front row seat 1379 00:54:09.980 --> 00:54:13.250 to one of the most magnificent events of the late Cretaceous, 1380 00:54:13.250 --> 00:54:15.652 the impact event and its aftermath. 1381 00:54:16.086 --> 00:54:19.623 And how did it affect them on an individual level? 1382 00:54:20.090 --> 00:54:21.725 And that's just such a personal story. 1383 00:54:21.725 --> 00:54:22.993 Each one of them 1384 00:54:22.993 --> 00:54:25.061 would have experienced it a little bit differently. 1385 00:54:25.295 --> 00:54:29.366 And to see that kind of develop in front of your face, 1386 00:54:29.366 --> 00:54:33.637 in the outcropping in the lab is a really personal experience. 1387 00:54:33.803 --> 00:54:37.140 You're there and you're listening to that animal story. 1388 00:54:37.974 --> 00:54:39.442 There's something really immediate about this. 1389 00:54:39.442 --> 00:54:41.978 Again, I'm looking down on a specimen of a fish, 1390 00:54:42.345 --> 00:54:44.281 and you pointed out to me that there are tiny 1391 00:54:44.281 --> 00:54:46.850 little spheres of glass stuck in its gills. 1392 00:54:47.183 --> 00:54:49.286 You know, that this creature died, it suffocated 1393 00:54:49.486 --> 00:54:51.254 because its gills were clogged 1394 00:54:51.254 --> 00:54:53.223 with ejecta that had to do with this 1395 00:54:53.223 --> 00:54:55.659 huge impact, this asteroid hitting the earth. 1396 00:54:55.859 --> 00:54:57.727 And there it is right there. 1397 00:54:57.727 --> 00:54:59.963 You know, these things had this 1398 00:55:00.563 --> 00:55:02.932 you know, they died, we think, because of this happening 1399 00:55:03.400 --> 00:55:04.401 like we were talking about today. 1400 00:55:04.401 --> 00:55:06.169 You're looking at this moment 1401 00:55:06.169 --> 00:55:08.438 and we were all just mentioning this even 1402 00:55:08.571 --> 00:55:10.240 while we were having lunch together today. 1403 00:55:10.240 --> 00:55:13.777 This was a moment our ancestors also experienced. 1404 00:55:14.044 --> 00:55:16.479 We we are related to things that lived through that day. 1405 00:55:16.913 --> 00:55:20.483 And, of course, things changed incredibly, this incredible 1406 00:55:20.483 --> 00:55:24.788 rich ecosystem dominated by the dinosaurs that went away 1407 00:55:24.788 --> 00:55:28.725 and this mammalian ecosystem begins to become more dominant. 1408 00:55:28.725 --> 00:55:30.694 So we're looking at an amazing change. 1409 00:55:30.694 --> 00:55:32.762 Maybe we wouldn't even be here talking about this 1410 00:55:32.996 --> 00:55:34.864 if that event hadn't happened. 1411 00:55:34.864 --> 00:55:36.966 If you put your finger 1412 00:55:37.634 --> 00:55:39.903 on a single point in time in the rock record 1413 00:55:40.136 --> 00:55:44.040 and say that point was absolutely pivotal to the world, 1414 00:55:44.541 --> 00:55:47.944 this was one of those points because you can literally 1415 00:55:47.944 --> 00:55:50.847 get your finger and put it on the Cape boundary grade, 1416 00:55:51.147 --> 00:55:54.417 the impact fallout and say, that's your dividing line, 1417 00:55:54.451 --> 00:55:57.087 that's your pivotal moment, because you're absolutely right, 1418 00:55:58.521 --> 00:56:02.459 the mammals rising up and being able to diversify that 1419 00:56:02.459 --> 00:56:06.363 massive shift in ecologies and ecosystems across the globe, 1420 00:56:07.030 --> 00:56:10.467 they're tied to that moment, to that impact, and 1421 00:56:11.301 --> 00:56:12.202 to see these animals 1422 00:56:12.202 --> 00:56:13.770 that would have experienced that event 1423 00:56:13.770 --> 00:56:15.739 and then to look closer, like you say, 1424 00:56:15.739 --> 00:56:16.072 and you can 1425 00:56:16.072 --> 00:56:19.976 see some of the impact debris packed in the gills of the fish 1426 00:56:19.976 --> 00:56:22.312 so that fish interacted with the impact debris. 1427 00:56:22.812 --> 00:56:24.247 The whole story is there. 1428 00:56:24.247 --> 00:56:27.584 You've got the impact that caused that tremendous shift. 1429 00:56:27.784 --> 00:56:30.053 You've got the animal that experienced it 1430 00:56:30.053 --> 00:56:32.989 and then you've got all of this in one layer 1431 00:56:33.289 --> 00:56:35.992 that gives you a moment by moment record of the aftermath. 1432 00:56:36.359 --> 00:56:39.062 You've got this layer cake of an incredible story. 1433 00:56:39.963 --> 00:56:41.164 So just kind of give people a chance 1434 00:56:41.164 --> 00:56:43.066 to start asking questions. 1435 00:56:43.066 --> 00:56:44.267 We have we got Dr. 1436 00:56:44.267 --> 00:56:47.303 Jim Garvin, who is the chief scientist here at NASA Goddard. 1437 00:56:47.771 --> 00:56:49.439 I was sitting next to you during the presentation. 1438 00:56:49.439 --> 00:56:50.673 You were reacting. 1439 00:56:50.673 --> 00:56:52.208 You were really excited. At one point. 1440 00:56:52.208 --> 00:56:54.377 You actually were almost like at the point of tears. 1441 00:56:54.377 --> 00:56:55.211 What are some of the moments 1442 00:56:55.211 --> 00:56:57.180 you remember that that you were looking at 1443 00:56:57.180 --> 00:56:59.182 the evidence thinking, wow, look what they have? 1444 00:56:59.349 --> 00:57:03.353 Well, I think what Robert's done with his team here is connect. 1445 00:57:03.353 --> 00:57:04.053 The way we looked 1446 00:57:04.053 --> 00:57:05.822 at the history of the rock record on Earth 1447 00:57:05.822 --> 00:57:08.525 as defined by life in these names of errors 1448 00:57:08.525 --> 00:57:09.526 we all grew up with 1449 00:57:09.526 --> 00:57:12.262 that became known as Cretaceous and Triassic 1450 00:57:12.295 --> 00:57:13.029 and all that 1451 00:57:13.029 --> 00:57:14.464 to the record of Impact 1452 00:57:14.464 --> 00:57:17.000 This Life on the Rocks cosmic collision story 1453 00:57:17.200 --> 00:57:19.302 that we've already used on other worlds. 1454 00:57:19.502 --> 00:57:21.004 How do we define the errors on the moon? 1455 00:57:21.004 --> 00:57:23.039 We named them for the errors of impacts 1456 00:57:23.206 --> 00:57:25.241 that defined different time horizons. 1457 00:57:25.241 --> 00:57:27.477 We've made a link now beyond our planet 1458 00:57:27.811 --> 00:57:29.813 through the lens of the bigger universe. 1459 00:57:30.146 --> 00:57:33.016 Roberts Stuff now starts to give us data 1460 00:57:33.116 --> 00:57:36.186 I see for that connection being expanded. 1461 00:57:36.319 --> 00:57:38.855 So, you know, maybe CBGBs, the wrong name, maybe 1462 00:57:38.855 --> 00:57:43.593 should be the big C for Jigsaw because it defined a change. 1463 00:57:43.993 --> 00:57:46.830 And those connections aren't only at the big animal scale 1464 00:57:46.830 --> 00:57:47.797 in some of your findings, 1465 00:57:47.797 --> 00:57:51.901 but also the microbial scale and how we read those records. 1466 00:57:51.935 --> 00:57:55.071 I can't wait to see what you learn, because my question is, 1467 00:57:55.305 --> 00:57:58.608 you found preserved elements of this micro comminuted 1468 00:57:59.309 --> 00:58:02.645 impactor that made this event that changed the course 1469 00:58:02.645 --> 00:58:03.847 of the history of life. 1470 00:58:03.847 --> 00:58:05.014 You played the tape backwards. 1471 00:58:05.014 --> 00:58:08.151 We wouldn't be here to quote a certain Yankee fan. 1472 00:58:08.384 --> 00:58:10.520 So what do you think about those? 1473 00:58:10.553 --> 00:58:13.890 I mean, that's a finding of cosmic significance. 1474 00:58:13.890 --> 00:58:14.691 It's Mother Nature's 1475 00:58:14.691 --> 00:58:16.726 best sample return to give us a little piece 1476 00:58:16.726 --> 00:58:18.795 of what she did to change the course of life. 1477 00:58:18.795 --> 00:58:21.164 I mean, why don't you tell us about that, Robert? 1478 00:58:21.164 --> 00:58:21.731 Well, 1479 00:58:21.731 --> 00:58:23.433 to find any sort of material 1480 00:58:23.433 --> 00:58:26.503 that's associated with the impact event and really 1481 00:58:26.503 --> 00:58:28.037 well preserved fragments like 1482 00:58:28.037 --> 00:58:32.041 the cosmic material we've got, it is like going back in time. 1483 00:58:33.209 --> 00:58:35.078 Getting a sample vial and getting material 1484 00:58:35.078 --> 00:58:37.280 from the site of impact and being able to study it 1485 00:58:37.814 --> 00:58:40.316 and working out the dynamics of the impact 1486 00:58:40.316 --> 00:58:43.253 event itself is incredibly, incredibly important. 1487 00:58:43.419 --> 00:58:46.022 That is paramount to understanding 1488 00:58:46.222 --> 00:58:47.590 how that impact affected 1489 00:58:47.590 --> 00:58:49.859 life on Earth and how natural hazards 1490 00:58:49.859 --> 00:58:52.529 are going to affect global ecosystems. 1491 00:58:53.196 --> 00:58:57.100 But it is a tremendously moving kind of a feeling 1492 00:58:57.100 --> 00:59:00.870 because you are literally connected to these moments 1493 00:59:00.870 --> 00:59:04.741 in time that are better understood now, 1494 00:59:04.741 --> 00:59:07.043 but still poorly understood in many different ways. 1495 00:59:07.377 --> 00:59:08.478 And they interfere 1496 00:59:08.478 --> 00:59:10.914 with so many different aspects of science and life. 1497 00:59:11.581 --> 00:59:14.984 So these questions are incredibly important to answer. 1498 00:59:15.285 --> 00:59:19.122 And as the answers are kind of flowing out, each one 1499 00:59:19.122 --> 00:59:22.025 kind of builds the excitement an 1500 00:59:23.026 --> 00:59:24.627 Well speaking, leading to more questions. 1501 00:59:24.627 --> 00:59:26.429 So there were people here that were paleontologist 1502 00:59:26.429 --> 00:59:28.298 Jim that were asking you about meteorites. 1503 00:59:28.298 --> 00:59:30.800 So so where where would this meteorite have come from? 1504 00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:31.834 Does anything about the 1505 00:59:31.834 --> 00:59:32.402 the structure, 1506 00:59:32.402 --> 00:59:33.202 the analysis they've done, 1507 00:59:33.202 --> 00:59:35.305 does that give you any clue about the history, 1508 00:59:35.305 --> 00:59:37.440 the structure of the meteorite, this kind of meteorite? 1509 00:59:37.440 --> 00:59:38.541 Well, Robert 1510 00:59:38.541 --> 00:59:41.578 Roberts and his team showed us that this is a carbonaceous. 1511 00:59:41.811 --> 00:59:43.613 We think from the preserved evidence 1512 00:59:43.613 --> 00:59:47.183 in those time capsules of amber within a sphere rule 1513 00:59:47.417 --> 00:59:49.819 that was made by the by the impact ejecta. 1514 00:59:49.852 --> 00:59:51.921 I love the impact ejecta personally. It's very moving. 1515 00:59:52.622 --> 00:59:53.990 Didn't want to experience anything 1516 00:59:53.990 --> 00:59:56.059 like the gills on the fish, but not monster. 1517 00:59:56.359 --> 00:59:59.696 So there is a little piece of those things 1518 00:59:59.696 --> 01:00:02.865 that we're now going to to sample what they tell us. 1519 01:00:03.032 --> 01:00:06.035 We just completed sampling the asteroid bennu. 1520 01:00:06.202 --> 01:00:06.869 Not as big 1521 01:00:06.869 --> 01:00:09.372 as the one that hit the earth and takes a little granted, 1522 01:00:09.405 --> 01:00:11.007 you know, less than a kilometer across. 1523 01:00:11.007 --> 01:00:12.508 And we're going to bring back those materials 1524 01:00:12.508 --> 01:00:14.510 to study in the way Robert is studying 1525 01:00:14.510 --> 01:00:17.647 the impactor that made this cosmic event. 1526 01:00:17.914 --> 01:00:19.515 So those connections 1527 01:00:19.515 --> 01:00:21.117 to that part of the inner solar system 1528 01:00:21.117 --> 01:00:22.552 that records that stuff, 1529 01:00:22.552 --> 01:00:24.954 those artifacts of the collisional history of Earth. 1530 01:00:25.355 --> 01:00:27.256 You know, he's got it. 1531 01:00:27.256 --> 01:00:28.591 So we're bringing it back. 1532 01:00:28.591 --> 01:00:30.393 Thanks to robotic spaceflight. 1533 01:00:30.393 --> 01:00:32.528 Wonderful job by osiris-rex. 1534 01:00:32.528 --> 01:00:35.565 And just a little deposit, a little sample of our own 1535 01:00:35.632 --> 01:00:38.001 for us to study and maybe other impacts. 1536 01:00:38.301 --> 01:00:41.371 Other ones not as consequential, but equally interesting. 1537 01:00:41.638 --> 01:00:44.240 Just in the last 40 years, understanding the role of impact 1538 01:00:44.540 --> 01:00:46.542 in the history of life, climate 1539 01:00:46.542 --> 01:00:49.278 and all that is a profoundly new change 1540 01:00:49.479 --> 01:00:51.481 that was heretical, as you said, Robert. 1541 01:00:51.481 --> 01:00:53.716 It was you know, you got to be skeptical 1542 01:00:53.716 --> 01:00:55.785 because everyone was telling you that's not the way it was. 1543 01:00:55.952 --> 01:00:57.520 And so I think I don't know. 1544 01:00:57.520 --> 01:01:01.290 Your work is showing us what could could really have been. 1545 01:01:01.357 --> 01:01:04.227 And that's the way science works, changing paradigms. 1546 01:01:05.561 --> 01:01:06.629 Also with us, we have Dr. 1547 01:01:06.629 --> 01:01:07.163 Krista Peters 1548 01:01:07.163 --> 01:01:09.198 Ledgard, who is our deputy director 1549 01:01:09.198 --> 01:01:11.501 of science at our science exploration director here. 1550 01:01:11.801 --> 01:01:14.103 And you're a hydrologist by training as well. 1551 01:01:14.137 --> 01:01:16.172 So so what what are some of the things that jumped out to you? 1552 01:01:16.172 --> 01:01:16.606 Oh, yeah. 1553 01:01:16.606 --> 01:01:19.575 Well, I mean, thinking about the storm surge. 1554 01:01:19.575 --> 01:01:22.145 Right. You know, and the power of water. Right. 1555 01:01:22.211 --> 01:01:24.747 Ten meter high deposit. 1556 01:01:25.548 --> 01:01:28.117 And just thinking about how, 1557 01:01:28.584 --> 01:01:30.253 you know, what the bed load was like. 1558 01:01:30.253 --> 01:01:33.122 I mean, there was there were logs recovered at the site. 1559 01:01:33.122 --> 01:01:37.960 I mean, just the power of the of the water in this event, 1560 01:01:38.494 --> 01:01:42.231 magnitude 11 or 12 earthquakes. 1561 01:01:42.231 --> 01:01:44.934 I mean, it just it's just blowing my mind. 1562 01:01:44.967 --> 01:01:47.770 So, you know, one of the things that occurred to me is, 1563 01:01:48.104 --> 01:01:51.641 you know, you have these two deposition episodes, right? So, 1564 01:01:52.909 --> 01:01:56.479 you know, how how did the 1565 01:01:56.479 --> 01:01:59.482 composition change, you know, from those two episodes? 1566 01:01:59.482 --> 01:02:02.785 And what what does that say about, you know, 1567 01:02:02.785 --> 01:02:05.555 the physics of the surge in those two episodes? 1568 01:02:05.955 --> 01:02:07.390 That's a phenomenal question. 1569 01:02:07.390 --> 01:02:08.024 And that's one thing 1570 01:02:08.024 --> 01:02:09.959 that we've been thinking about quite a bit. 1571 01:02:09.959 --> 01:02:13.296 The sedimentary record is going to give you 1572 01:02:13.329 --> 01:02:15.298 the details about that story 1573 01:02:15.298 --> 01:02:17.700 and the grain size and the bed forms 1574 01:02:17.700 --> 01:02:18.835 and everything else you get there. 1575 01:02:18.835 --> 01:02:20.770 They're going to tell you what it was like 1576 01:02:20.770 --> 01:02:21.804 if you know how to read it. 1577 01:02:21.804 --> 01:02:24.707 And in this case, we had two pulses to that surge. 1578 01:02:24.707 --> 01:02:27.376 There was one initial pulse, it back flowed 1579 01:02:27.577 --> 01:02:29.612 and then there was a second long pulse. 1580 01:02:29.612 --> 01:02:32.048 And we know that they occurred right after each other 1581 01:02:32.515 --> 01:02:34.450 because you have animals and plants 1582 01:02:34.450 --> 01:02:35.852 that would have been very delicate 1583 01:02:35.852 --> 01:02:37.987 that cross-cut all the deposit. 1584 01:02:37.987 --> 01:02:39.756 So you're not going to have 1585 01:02:39.756 --> 01:02:41.791 a long hiatus between those two pulses. 1586 01:02:42.625 --> 01:02:43.893 And then when you look at the pulses, 1587 01:02:43.893 --> 01:02:45.628 there's a little bit of a difference in composition. 1588 01:02:45.628 --> 01:02:47.663 So the first one was much more turbulent. 1589 01:02:47.663 --> 01:02:48.865 That first pulse 1590 01:02:48.865 --> 01:02:51.634 had a lot of rip up class, had a lot of sand content. 1591 01:02:51.868 --> 01:02:54.137 The grain size was a lot, a lot bigger. 1592 01:02:54.504 --> 01:02:56.873 So you had a much more turbulent surge, 1593 01:02:57.306 --> 01:03:00.810 the second surge, more mud, more clay size particles. 1594 01:03:01.010 --> 01:03:03.112 And it appeared to be a longer surge. 1595 01:03:03.112 --> 01:03:06.849 So this massive, really bad turbulent surge backflow 1596 01:03:07.083 --> 01:03:09.452 and then a longer, more protracted 1597 01:03:09.952 --> 01:03:12.355 final surge before it slowed down 1598 01:03:12.355 --> 01:03:15.191 and all the water's receded, leaving this veneer 1599 01:03:15.391 --> 01:03:18.528 of mud and animals and logs and everything on the landscape. 1600 01:03:19.495 --> 01:03:21.531 Really cool. 1601 01:03:21.531 --> 01:03:23.232 Long live the lodge. Yes. 1602 01:03:24.567 --> 01:03:25.301 We also have Dr. 1603 01:03:25.301 --> 01:03:26.969 John Mather, the other senior project 1604 01:03:26.969 --> 01:03:29.071 scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope 1605 01:03:29.372 --> 01:03:30.540 and and a physicist. 1606 01:03:30.540 --> 01:03:32.809 So, John, what's your take, bringing the physics into this? 1607 01:03:32.909 --> 01:03:33.810 Oh, my goodness. 1608 01:03:33.810 --> 01:03:37.213 I'm excited, extremely excited to see the evidence that we've 1609 01:03:37.213 --> 01:03:40.183 now got for the details of what happened on that day. 1610 01:03:40.650 --> 01:03:43.019 Because this is the first chance we really have to check 1611 01:03:43.319 --> 01:03:45.755 all the incredible calculations that people can do 1612 01:03:45.755 --> 01:03:47.590 with hydrodynamics and simulations 1613 01:03:47.590 --> 01:03:50.560 of computer versions of rock hitting the earth. 1614 01:03:51.661 --> 01:03:55.131 But I'm also led to think about implications for our search 1615 01:03:55.131 --> 01:03:56.599 for life elsewhere in the universe, 1616 01:03:56.599 --> 01:03:59.035 because, well, it was pretty tricky here. 1617 01:03:59.402 --> 01:04:01.771 How much could we forecast? How could we predict? 1618 01:04:02.004 --> 01:04:04.140 So if we're going to look for life on other planets, 1619 01:04:04.574 --> 01:04:06.609 are we going to imagine that they're just sort of 1620 01:04:06.609 --> 01:04:08.311 sitting there passively producing life? 1621 01:04:08.311 --> 01:04:11.581 Or do we imagine that they also have a chaotic history 1622 01:04:11.581 --> 01:04:16.452 with crashes and evolution and extinctions and disasters, 1623 01:04:17.019 --> 01:04:20.056 one after another of the same sort that we've had here. 1624 01:04:20.056 --> 01:04:22.758 We've had Snowball Earth, where Earth was frozen solid. 1625 01:04:22.758 --> 01:04:24.393 Apparently, we warmed up. 1626 01:04:24.393 --> 01:04:26.462 We've had huge changes, 1627 01:04:26.829 --> 01:04:29.232 catastrophic to everything that lived there at the time. 1628 01:04:29.632 --> 01:04:31.300 And here is one catastrophe 1629 01:04:31.300 --> 01:04:33.936 we can examine in detail because it happened so quickly. 1630 01:04:34.804 --> 01:04:36.205 But we should 1631 01:04:36.205 --> 01:04:36.739 we should be 1632 01:04:36.739 --> 01:04:38.875 picturing catastrophes everywhere 1633 01:04:38.875 --> 01:04:41.310 that we're looking for living things, not just here. 1634 01:04:41.510 --> 01:04:45.848 So look on Mars, look on on Europa, look on Titan. 1635 01:04:45.848 --> 01:04:46.983 And look at the other places 1636 01:04:46.983 --> 01:04:49.619 that are interesting as sources of life, 1637 01:04:49.619 --> 01:04:51.187 catastrophe everywhere. 1638 01:04:51.187 --> 01:04:55.057 So and you're thinking also, what does it feel like to be 1639 01:04:55.057 --> 01:04:58.728 there as a living, sentient creature experiencing that day, 1640 01:04:58.928 --> 01:05:00.029 which is something people 1641 01:05:00.029 --> 01:05:01.864 I don't think can fully appreciate it 1642 01:05:01.864 --> 01:05:03.966 because you feel it and you see it. 1643 01:05:03.966 --> 01:05:05.468 You think, I'm like an animal there. 1644 01:05:05.468 --> 01:05:08.037 I'm feeling the heat, I'm feeling the water. 1645 01:05:08.337 --> 01:05:10.940 And I don't think we've really been able to 1646 01:05:11.440 --> 01:05:12.909 picture that part in the past. 1647 01:05:12.909 --> 01:05:15.645 So thank you for making that so possible for us. 1648 01:05:17.647 --> 01:05:19.348 It's an absolutely fascinating thing. 1649 01:05:19.348 --> 01:05:21.751 And you mentioned life on other planets 1650 01:05:21.751 --> 01:05:25.054 and how a catastrophe might play a role 1651 01:05:25.054 --> 01:05:27.657 that could also go the other way in that 1652 01:05:27.957 --> 01:05:31.861 the frequency of certain levels of catastrophe 1653 01:05:32.161 --> 01:05:34.630 could have a positive effect in some ways, 1654 01:05:34.630 --> 01:05:37.099 because those could actually spark different changes 1655 01:05:37.233 --> 01:05:38.868 in the evolution of life on those planets. 1656 01:05:38.868 --> 01:05:41.938 So in the short term, meaning in the, 1657 01:05:41.938 --> 01:05:44.774 you know, million to 10 million years scale, 1658 01:05:44.941 --> 01:05:47.243 it might not be so good for those that are experiencing it. 1659 01:05:47.410 --> 01:05:48.544 But in the grand scheme, 1660 01:05:48.544 --> 01:05:50.713 that actually could bring about different changes 1661 01:05:50.713 --> 01:05:53.182 in the trajectory of those evolutionary schemes 1662 01:05:53.282 --> 01:05:54.784 and bring about different innovations. 1663 01:05:54.784 --> 01:05:58.487 So it's really fascinating to think how that interplay occurs. 1664 01:06:00.423 --> 01:06:01.924 And also just finding the evidence for it. 1665 01:06:01.924 --> 01:06:03.292 I mean, one of the things that really 1666 01:06:03.292 --> 01:06:05.494 you know, I worked on the the Spitzer Space Telescope, 1667 01:06:05.494 --> 01:06:08.097 which is an infrared telescope, and we would see events 1668 01:06:08.431 --> 01:06:09.699 where there would be this huge 1669 01:06:09.699 --> 01:06:12.335 blast of heat from a young planetary system . 1670 01:06:12.335 --> 01:06:12.735 And really, 1671 01:06:12.735 --> 01:06:15.171 the only explanation was that two planets had collided, 1672 01:06:15.404 --> 01:06:17.206 and that was something that seemed impossible. 1673 01:06:17.206 --> 01:06:19.976 But then when the lunar samples were brought back from Apollo, 1674 01:06:19.976 --> 01:06:21.177 there were possible clues of that. 1675 01:06:21.177 --> 01:06:22.912 Having been the origin of the moon, 1676 01:06:22.912 --> 01:06:24.780 we wouldn't have even known what could have happened 1677 01:06:24.780 --> 01:06:26.082 in an exoplanet system. 1678 01:06:26.082 --> 01:06:28.217 Have we not been to the moon to get that sample? 1679 01:06:28.517 --> 01:06:31.654 So, I mean, the tremendous cataclysms that drive 1680 01:06:31.821 --> 01:06:34.256 the formation of planets, the evolution of life. 1681 01:06:34.857 --> 01:06:38.027 Well, and Goddard thought that the small craters on 1682 01:06:38.027 --> 01:06:39.562 the moon were volcanoes 1683 01:06:39.562 --> 01:06:42.932 and described them in his is motivating some of his work, 1684 01:06:43.132 --> 01:06:44.300 leading to the rockets, 1685 01:06:44.300 --> 01:06:47.203 the early fuel rockets that led to what we have today. 1686 01:06:47.570 --> 01:06:48.471 Didn't realize 1687 01:06:48.471 --> 01:06:52.408 that the mirror were impact basins that we speak with Robert 1688 01:06:52.808 --> 01:06:56.178 has shown us here on earth can do to a life bearing system. 1689 01:06:56.212 --> 01:06:58.314 So I think that's stunning. 1690 01:06:58.881 --> 01:07:00.750 We're becoming aware. Yeah. 1691 01:07:00.750 --> 01:07:02.885 And then finally, we also have Dr. Gavin Schmidt. 1692 01:07:02.885 --> 01:07:06.622 He works for the Institute of Space Studies up in New York. 1693 01:07:06.956 --> 01:07:09.392 And the director, I should say, that is works there. 1694 01:07:09.658 --> 01:07:10.493 But we were 1695 01:07:10.493 --> 01:07:11.427 we were talking a bit 1696 01:07:11.427 --> 01:07:12.495 earlier in the day, 1697 01:07:12.495 --> 01:07:13.596 and you had all kinds of 1698 01:07:13.596 --> 01:07:15.297 questions that were coming into your head 1699 01:07:15.297 --> 01:07:16.966 about what would the atmosphere have been like, 1700 01:07:16.966 --> 01:07:18.434 how would the chemistry have changed, 1701 01:07:18.434 --> 01:07:20.669 and what are some of the things that stood out to you here? 1702 01:07:20.669 --> 01:07:24.306 So I'm very interested in the climatic impacts of this. 1703 01:07:24.306 --> 01:07:27.843 So so I mean, we've talked about the the instantaneous impacts, 1704 01:07:27.843 --> 01:07:31.180 you know, the fire from the sky, the impact, the the 1705 01:07:31.213 --> 01:07:34.350 the earthquakes, the sizes in there in the water. 1706 01:07:34.683 --> 01:07:35.751 But, you know, 1707 01:07:35.751 --> 01:07:37.053 some things will have survived that, 1708 01:07:37.053 --> 01:07:38.521 but they might not have survived all the 1709 01:07:38.521 --> 01:07:39.755 things that came afterwards. 1710 01:07:39.755 --> 01:07:41.891 So what happened to the carbon cycle? 1711 01:07:41.891 --> 01:07:43.225 What happened to 1712 01:07:44.193 --> 01:07:45.361 things in the stratosphere? 1713 01:07:45.361 --> 01:07:48.597 How long and how deep was there an impact? 1714 01:07:48.764 --> 01:07:50.900 Winter? Was it warm? Then it got cold. 1715 01:07:50.900 --> 01:07:51.801 Then it got warm again. 1716 01:07:51.801 --> 01:07:53.569 What happened to the carbon dioxide 1717 01:07:53.569 --> 01:07:55.337 that was released from all the fires? 1718 01:07:55.337 --> 01:07:58.007 Was that the cause of the acidification events? 1719 01:07:58.474 --> 01:08:01.610 And I think we haven't really been able 1720 01:08:02.011 --> 01:08:05.281 to kind of piece together that history 1721 01:08:05.414 --> 01:08:08.184 in very much detail so far, because we haven't had, 1722 01:08:08.484 --> 01:08:09.218 you know, 1723 01:08:09.518 --> 01:08:12.521 specific information from the time event itself, 1724 01:08:12.521 --> 01:08:14.156 which I think this is going to help with a lot. 1725 01:08:14.156 --> 01:08:17.893 But we also haven't had the models or the understanding 1726 01:08:17.893 --> 01:08:19.428 of how all those things fit together, 1727 01:08:19.428 --> 01:08:21.797 particularly in a Cretaceous context, 1728 01:08:22.298 --> 01:08:23.599 for us to be able to do that. 1729 01:08:23.599 --> 01:08:26.535 So really, it's only in the last five or ten years 1730 01:08:27.136 --> 01:08:29.839 that all kind of global scale models 1731 01:08:30.106 --> 01:08:33.776 have enough physics to be able to answer these questions. 1732 01:08:34.210 --> 01:08:34.577 And that 1733 01:08:34.577 --> 01:08:37.680 and then this information coming in kind of really primes 1734 01:08:37.880 --> 01:08:41.851 the pump for, I think, future explorations of that 1735 01:08:42.985 --> 01:08:45.888 of that whole series of cataclysms, 1736 01:08:46.021 --> 01:08:47.089 because you've got the impacts, 1737 01:08:47.089 --> 01:08:48.891 but then you've got the winter, then you've got the starvation, 1738 01:08:48.891 --> 01:08:51.427 then you've got the fires and whatever order, you know. 1739 01:08:51.427 --> 01:08:52.595 And maybe, you know, 1740 01:08:52.595 --> 01:08:54.497 there are some places that were refugia, 1741 01:08:54.497 --> 01:08:55.664 maybe there were some places 1742 01:08:55.664 --> 01:08:57.933 that were not affected by some of these things. 1743 01:08:57.933 --> 01:09:00.803 And maybe we can learn a little bit more about, 1744 01:09:01.070 --> 01:09:05.474 you know, just even the short term changes that that occurred. 1745 01:09:06.408 --> 01:09:10.312 And like climatically, it's the same processes 1746 01:09:10.446 --> 01:09:13.849 that, as you say, that we're changing now 1747 01:09:14.150 --> 01:09:17.052 through a different mechanism, you know, changes in carbon 1748 01:09:17.052 --> 01:09:19.855 dioxide, changes in ocean acidification, changes 1749 01:09:20.222 --> 01:09:23.159 potentially in stratospheric input if we ever decide 1750 01:09:23.159 --> 01:09:25.394 to to geoengineering our way out of this, 1751 01:09:26.195 --> 01:09:28.430 all of these things, the extinction events, 1752 01:09:28.531 --> 01:09:32.301 all of these things have parallels to the impact event, 1753 01:09:32.368 --> 01:09:33.769 but also to some of the other 1754 01:09:33.769 --> 01:09:34.803 kind of interesting events 1755 01:09:34.803 --> 01:09:37.306 that happened in the Cretaceous or or in the years. 1756 01:09:37.473 --> 01:09:40.176 But that, you know, it's a fascinating tableau 1757 01:09:40.276 --> 01:09:43.045 for us to be able to build credibility 1758 01:09:43.245 --> 01:09:46.649 in our understanding of what's happening now 1759 01:09:47.183 --> 01:09:49.318 by by explaining what happened then. 1760 01:09:51.220 --> 01:09:52.721 I couldn't agree more, and I couldn't 1761 01:09:52.721 --> 01:09:54.523 say it better than you just did. 1762 01:09:54.523 --> 01:09:56.292 I absolutely agree. 1763 01:09:56.292 --> 01:09:58.961 And and adding to that, 1764 01:10:00.329 --> 01:10:01.197 you know, you're talking 1765 01:10:01.197 --> 01:10:01.630 about all these 1766 01:10:01.630 --> 01:10:03.666 different processes that occurred afterward 1767 01:10:03.666 --> 01:10:05.467 and you're talking about injection of 1768 01:10:05.467 --> 01:10:08.237 of different debris into the atmosphere. 1769 01:10:08.237 --> 01:10:10.973 Every little tiny step forward, we're going to add more data 1770 01:10:10.973 --> 01:10:11.407 to that. 1771 01:10:11.407 --> 01:10:14.777 And by we, I mean the whole scientific community. 1772 01:10:15.277 --> 01:10:18.747 And that makes that a more complete picture. 1773 01:10:19.081 --> 01:10:20.683 And part of that is 1774 01:10:20.683 --> 01:10:23.052 if we do have these pieces of cosmic material 1775 01:10:24.553 --> 01:10:26.789 by ascertaining what they're made of, 1776 01:10:26.789 --> 01:10:28.090 what's the makeup, 1777 01:10:28.090 --> 01:10:28.891 that's what's being 1778 01:10:28.891 --> 01:10:31.660 injected into the atmosphere along with the target rock. 1779 01:10:31.994 --> 01:10:32.394 So that's 1780 01:10:32.394 --> 01:10:35.564 helping us to better constrain what was being put up there. 1781 01:10:36.265 --> 01:10:39.068 And by studying other things at the site, including the PGE 1782 01:10:39.101 --> 01:10:41.537 boundary, that's that's capping the deposit. 1783 01:10:42.137 --> 01:10:45.241 We're working on kind of constraining 1784 01:10:45.841 --> 01:10:48.510 how long that impact winter would have been, 1785 01:10:48.677 --> 01:10:50.746 how long would the blockage of sunlight occurred. 1786 01:10:50.746 --> 01:10:55.584 And we're actually kind of fine tuning the previous data 1787 01:10:55.584 --> 01:10:56.652 that's been collected on that. 1788 01:10:56.652 --> 01:10:59.989 So hopefully that gives us some really interesting numbers. 1789 01:11:00.322 --> 01:11:01.657 But obviously 1790 01:11:01.657 --> 01:11:04.927 all these factors come into play of how these poor things 1791 01:11:05.427 --> 01:11:08.931 had to weather those first years, ten years, you know, 1792 01:11:08.964 --> 01:11:11.166 100.000 years. whatever it was. 1793 01:11:11.166 --> 01:11:13.636 And that applies exactly like you said to today. 1794 01:11:13.969 --> 01:11:14.770 Yeah. Yeah. 1795 01:11:14.770 --> 01:11:16.705 I mean, you mentioned earlier 1796 01:11:16.705 --> 01:11:18.474 that there's some evidence that this happened 1797 01:11:18.474 --> 01:11:20.976 in the Northern Hemisphere spring. Right. 1798 01:11:21.110 --> 01:11:22.811 That's that's kind of interesting, right. 1799 01:11:22.811 --> 01:11:25.381 Because the impact itself is quite close to the equator, 1800 01:11:25.514 --> 01:11:26.982 but in the northern hemisphere. 1801 01:11:26.982 --> 01:11:27.983 And so what does that mean 1802 01:11:27.983 --> 01:11:31.553 for how much this debris spread across the hemispheres? 1803 01:11:31.553 --> 01:11:31.754 You know, 1804 01:11:31.754 --> 01:11:33.789 maybe in the southern hemisphere, 1805 01:11:33.789 --> 01:11:34.757 you know, things were a little bit 1806 01:11:34.757 --> 01:11:36.225 different and maybe not so dramatic. 1807 01:11:36.225 --> 01:11:36.692 I mean, there's a 1808 01:11:36.692 --> 01:11:40.296 there's a lot of things to explore by looking at 1809 01:11:40.429 --> 01:11:43.866 the details of what's coming out of these new studies. 1810 01:11:44.333 --> 01:11:44.833 Think as well 1811 01:11:44.833 --> 01:11:45.934 about the trajectory 1812 01:11:45.934 --> 01:11:49.605 of the impact and the angle of impact of this bolide. 1813 01:11:49.938 --> 01:11:53.108 There are some impact angles that are incompatible 1814 01:11:53.108 --> 01:11:55.377 with any fragment surviving the impact event, 1815 01:11:55.644 --> 01:11:57.613 and there are some that are somewhat compatible 1816 01:11:57.613 --> 01:11:58.714 and there are some impact 1817 01:11:58.714 --> 01:12:01.150 angles that would lead to a much better, 1818 01:12:02.017 --> 01:12:04.286 you know, likelihood that you would find a fragment. 1819 01:12:04.286 --> 01:12:06.422 So the fact that we do have a couple of fragments 1820 01:12:06.722 --> 01:12:08.791 kind of helps us to constrain that a little bit better. 1821 01:12:08.791 --> 01:12:09.825 I know there have been a bunch 1822 01:12:09.825 --> 01:12:11.760 of different ideas put forward in the past. 1823 01:12:11.760 --> 01:12:13.562 This might help us to kind of weed through those 1824 01:12:13.562 --> 01:12:15.764 a little bit better and have an idea of what 1825 01:12:15.764 --> 01:12:17.866 that impact angle would have been. 1826 01:12:17.866 --> 01:12:21.370 And of course, in turn, the angle of impact has its own 1827 01:12:21.370 --> 01:12:24.039 set of implications in itself. 1828 01:12:24.740 --> 01:12:27.810 I think one of the sidebars of what Gavin and he was saying is 1829 01:12:28.210 --> 01:12:30.913 so we think by theoretical physics 1830 01:12:31.313 --> 01:12:34.917 that this scale of impact 10 to 20 million megatons 1831 01:12:34.917 --> 01:12:36.151 of TNT equivalent 1832 01:12:36.151 --> 01:12:38.287 would have mostly blown off the Earth's atmosphere 1833 01:12:38.554 --> 01:12:40.322 as it existed at the time. 1834 01:12:40.322 --> 01:12:41.623 It's all gone. 1835 01:12:41.657 --> 01:12:42.524 What happened? 1836 01:12:42.524 --> 01:12:43.759 It obviously didn't do that 1837 01:12:43.759 --> 01:12:45.661 completely because life persisted. 1838 01:12:45.661 --> 01:12:47.663 You have the most record in your stuff. 1839 01:12:47.663 --> 01:12:49.898 So what was the early time like? 1840 01:12:50.232 --> 01:12:54.203 Because, you know, we're also dumping gigatons of stuff 1841 01:12:54.203 --> 01:12:57.306 into the stratosphere, mostly from the target, 1842 01:12:57.306 --> 01:13:01.043 which was the carbonate bank with ocean waters and all that. 1843 01:13:01.043 --> 01:13:03.178 So that's the primary load, not the impact. 1844 01:13:03.178 --> 01:13:04.380 That's a little thing. 1845 01:13:04.380 --> 01:13:09.051 It's excavating to 30 kilometers in the quasi oceanic crust, 1846 01:13:09.318 --> 01:13:11.320 only grabbing at 30 kilometers down, 1847 01:13:11.387 --> 01:13:13.088 probably the transient greater. 1848 01:13:13.088 --> 01:13:14.823 Absolutely. 1849 01:13:14.890 --> 01:13:16.692 So on. My God. 1850 01:13:16.692 --> 01:13:17.159 I mean, now 1851 01:13:17.159 --> 01:13:19.128 we're through the skin of I mean, 1852 01:13:19.128 --> 01:13:21.096 like the continental crust by the oceanic crust. 1853 01:13:21.096 --> 01:13:22.231 Be right through it. 1854 01:13:22.231 --> 01:13:25.200 So, you know, God forbid, what does that all mean? 1855 01:13:25.501 --> 01:13:25.768 You know, 1856 01:13:25.768 --> 01:13:28.370 and these are the implications of that early time life record 1857 01:13:28.570 --> 01:13:30.506 and the chemical record you were getting to. 1858 01:13:30.506 --> 01:13:31.840 Any of that's preserved, 1859 01:13:31.840 --> 01:13:32.574 those are going to be 1860 01:13:32.574 --> 01:13:36.612 those model constraints that we can use for models that, 1861 01:13:36.645 --> 01:13:39.448 you know, that can produce where everything's going. 1862 01:13:39.648 --> 01:13:41.517 But what else is going on? 1863 01:13:41.517 --> 01:13:43.018 You know, they got down that deep. 1864 01:13:43.018 --> 01:13:44.453 I mean, did it actually like 1865 01:13:44.453 --> 01:13:46.622 was that like a volcano that hit magma or something? 1866 01:13:46.722 --> 01:13:49.825 Well, it would have hit whatever's at the 30 kilometer 1867 01:13:49.825 --> 01:13:52.394 depth in the transient cavity propagation, like Robert said. 1868 01:13:52.394 --> 01:13:56.698 But then the excavation stage moved this massive stuff out 1869 01:13:56.698 --> 01:13:59.334 and rippled it through over a period of a few hours. 1870 01:13:59.635 --> 01:14:01.036 And the resonant thermal pulse 1871 01:14:01.036 --> 01:14:01.770 was probably, 1872 01:14:01.770 --> 01:14:04.873 you know, thousands of years in that region, in that area. 1873 01:14:04.873 --> 01:14:07.543 So that Relic's scar is going to be part 1874 01:14:07.543 --> 01:14:09.311 of the Earth's history in that region. 1875 01:14:09.311 --> 01:14:10.612 You're 3000 kilometers away. 1876 01:14:10.612 --> 01:14:12.714 So that's a great place to look at the consequences 1877 01:14:12.714 --> 01:14:13.582 without having been, 1878 01:14:13.582 --> 01:14:17.085 you know, eradicated quickly or more quickly than you'd like. 1879 01:14:17.386 --> 01:14:18.554 Probably didn't feel a thing. 1880 01:14:18.554 --> 01:14:20.923 Well, I don't know if anybody likes to be eradicated, right? 1881 01:14:20.923 --> 01:14:21.857 No, no. Eradication 1882 01:14:23.792 --> 01:14:24.927 eradication is not. 1883 01:14:24.927 --> 01:14:26.562 Yeah, there's no that's not a good thing. 1884 01:14:26.562 --> 01:14:27.729 Well, actually and Christo, 1885 01:14:27.729 --> 01:14:29.598 as the hydrologist, we were talking about how 1886 01:14:29.598 --> 01:14:31.900 they were fresh water animals and saltwater animals 1887 01:14:32.134 --> 01:14:33.335 all mixed together. Yeah. 1888 01:14:33.335 --> 01:14:35.604 So so this really was a catastrophic flow 1889 01:14:35.737 --> 01:14:38.006 of a saltwater body into a river system. 1890 01:14:38.006 --> 01:14:39.041 Yes, exactly. 1891 01:14:39.041 --> 01:14:40.642 So, I mean, that that's 1892 01:14:40.642 --> 01:14:43.278 that was such a compelling piece of evidence here. 1893 01:14:43.278 --> 01:14:44.480 Right, that, 1894 01:14:44.480 --> 01:14:44.980 you know, that 1895 01:14:44.980 --> 01:14:48.083 you see these species together that shouldn't be together. 1896 01:14:48.750 --> 01:14:50.686 And, you know, again. 1897 01:14:50.686 --> 01:14:52.855 I like it. It made me. 1898 01:14:53.755 --> 01:14:57.192 You know, curious about how I mean, it is 1899 01:14:57.292 --> 01:15:01.930 it was sort of a jumble of of lots of things together. So. 1900 01:15:02.197 --> 01:15:06.101 I mean, as you approach this jumble and you started to say, 1901 01:15:06.101 --> 01:15:07.769 wait a minute, that shouldn't be here. 1902 01:15:07.769 --> 01:15:09.404 Like, how did you approach? 1903 01:15:10.506 --> 01:15:11.507 You know, 1904 01:15:11.507 --> 01:15:14.843 going forward, once you started to realize like, wait a minute, 1905 01:15:14.843 --> 01:15:17.412 this is different, this should not be here. 1906 01:15:17.412 --> 01:15:20.382 Well, before there was anything involving the impact, 1907 01:15:20.382 --> 01:15:24.520 even in our brains, the two real red flags are okay. 1908 01:15:24.520 --> 01:15:27.289 You've got a river that would normally run somewhat 1909 01:15:27.289 --> 01:15:30.259 east and it's running westward now 1910 01:15:30.759 --> 01:15:33.061 based on the flow direction that that doesn't make any sense. 1911 01:15:33.629 --> 01:15:35.364 And you couple that with the fact 1912 01:15:35.364 --> 01:15:38.200 that you've got Marine fossils there, microfossils, you've got 1913 01:15:38.767 --> 01:15:41.370 dinoflagellates, you've got form and infra, 1914 01:15:41.603 --> 01:15:43.539 and then you've got Ammonites and other things, 1915 01:15:43.539 --> 01:15:47.776 mosasaur pieces and and marine fish and sharks teeth. 1916 01:15:48.210 --> 01:15:51.947 You've got all those marine fossils mixed in this deposit 1917 01:15:52.281 --> 01:15:56.184 that was created by a westward flowing surge. 1918 01:15:56.184 --> 01:15:59.421 And obviously, it's not supposed to be that way, right? 1919 01:15:59.454 --> 01:16:01.356 That's not the way rivers usually behave. 1920 01:16:01.356 --> 01:16:03.592 So it's an exceptional event that got us thinking, 1921 01:16:03.625 --> 01:16:05.160 what the heck went on over here? 1922 01:16:05.160 --> 01:16:07.462 Why did the surge occur? 1923 01:16:07.462 --> 01:16:09.498 And then we were finding ejecta 1924 01:16:09.498 --> 01:16:11.767 and different things that connected it to the impact. 1925 01:16:11.767 --> 01:16:14.803 And then there was the cap of the big clay, like, oh. 1926 01:16:15.170 --> 01:16:17.239 Oh, what's that? Yeah. Yeah. 1927 01:16:18.140 --> 01:16:20.309 I bet you reacted more dramatically than that. 1928 01:16:20.342 --> 01:16:21.710 I mean, you're talking about 1929 01:16:21.710 --> 01:16:23.211 wanting to be in the minds of these creatures. 1930 01:16:23.211 --> 01:16:25.213 I want to be in your mind as you started 1931 01:16:25.213 --> 01:16:28.684 piecing this together and like, oh, my gosh, that's 1932 01:16:29.251 --> 01:16:30.252 that was a wild place. 1933 01:16:31.887 --> 01:16:34.189 Yeah, I can see the part. 1934 01:16:34.189 --> 01:16:38.427 So did you find this site or was that was it found in Matt? 1935 01:16:39.127 --> 01:16:40.729 But people didn't really know what it was. 1936 01:16:40.729 --> 01:16:41.697 The site is actually 1937 01:16:41.697 --> 01:16:44.866 a really incredible story and it's actually 1938 01:16:45.067 --> 01:16:48.170 a beautiful situation of how things really should work 1939 01:16:49.171 --> 01:16:51.073 of people working together. 1940 01:16:51.073 --> 01:16:54.076 I worked on a site for my master's 1941 01:16:54.309 --> 01:16:56.545 thesis that dealt with really fine time 1942 01:16:56.545 --> 01:16:57.679 scales in the fossil record, 1943 01:16:57.679 --> 01:17:00.248 and we wanted to find one closer to the boundary. 1944 01:17:00.682 --> 01:17:04.353 And there was a group of of avocation 1945 01:17:04.453 --> 01:17:07.222 or fossil hunters who have a company that 1946 01:17:07.756 --> 01:17:10.258 digs up and sells fossils of paleo prospectors 1947 01:17:10.459 --> 01:17:12.094 Steve Nicholas and Rob Silva. 1948 01:17:12.094 --> 01:17:14.429 They originally set foot on the site 1949 01:17:14.663 --> 01:17:16.765 and they saw all these fish poking out of the site, 1950 01:17:16.765 --> 01:17:19.034 which was a big red flag for them. 1951 01:17:19.067 --> 01:17:20.402 You don't see fish 1952 01:17:20.402 --> 01:17:22.638 in the Hell Creek formation before that site. 1953 01:17:22.871 --> 01:17:25.040 There were, I think, three or four articulated fish. 1954 01:17:25.040 --> 01:17:26.642 It doesn't happen. 1955 01:17:26.675 --> 01:17:29.544 The preservation bias is against 1956 01:17:29.578 --> 01:17:31.013 the preservation of fish like that. 1957 01:17:31.013 --> 01:17:31.980 So that was exceptional. 1958 01:17:31.980 --> 01:17:34.049 Oh, my God, we've got fish at the site. 1959 01:17:34.049 --> 01:17:35.984 And little did we know that we'd be, 1960 01:17:35.984 --> 01:17:37.519 you know, wowing over everything else later. 1961 01:17:37.519 --> 01:17:40.889 But that point, it was the fish and they thought it was a lake 1962 01:17:40.889 --> 01:17:42.924 at first because of the striations. 1963 01:17:43.325 --> 01:17:45.494 And that was interesting to me. 1964 01:17:45.961 --> 01:17:50.365 And they facilitated the work to move forward to 1965 01:17:50.365 --> 01:17:51.299 my research group. 1966 01:17:51.299 --> 01:17:53.201 And that's the best thing that could ever have happened 1967 01:17:53.201 --> 01:17:55.103 because we were able to piece together 1968 01:17:55.103 --> 01:17:58.740 everything that occurred thus far in our research 1969 01:17:59.074 --> 01:18:03.278 and we were able to get all of these specimens, preserve them, 1970 01:18:03.612 --> 01:18:06.281 because the environment out 1971 01:18:06.281 --> 01:18:09.217 there is not conducive to the preservation of fossils. 1972 01:18:09.518 --> 01:18:11.987 They're imperiled every moment they're in the outcrop, 1973 01:18:12.020 --> 01:18:14.756 they will get washed away. The winter is bad on them. 1974 01:18:14.956 --> 01:18:17.793 So that whole situation ended up 1975 01:18:18.026 --> 01:18:20.762 culminating in a tremendous research project 1976 01:18:21.363 --> 01:18:25.701 and an amazing interpretation of the site and data 1977 01:18:25.701 --> 01:18:28.970 that is now able to be used by God knows how many people 1978 01:18:29.237 --> 01:18:30.839 to try to put the story together. 1979 01:18:30.839 --> 01:18:34.409 So yeah, that one group actually first set foot on the site, 1980 01:18:34.743 --> 01:18:36.878 and if they hadn't done that, 1981 01:18:36.878 --> 01:18:38.513 who knows if it ever would have been found? 1982 01:18:38.513 --> 01:18:40.882 Because there were other people, researchers 1983 01:18:40.882 --> 01:18:43.985 working in that area for decades and they never saw the site. 1984 01:18:44.219 --> 01:18:45.687 They never even found it. 1985 01:18:45.687 --> 01:18:47.856 No, they knew you like fish. 1986 01:18:47.856 --> 01:18:49.658 And so they were like, Hey, there's something cool. 1987 01:18:49.658 --> 01:18:53.862 Just look at this fish and and look what history made for us. 1988 01:18:53.862 --> 01:18:57.199 You know, it goes from fish to putting together little, tiny 1989 01:18:57.199 --> 01:19:00.769 details of this massive story of the end of the Cretaceous. 1990 01:19:01.336 --> 01:19:03.371 Who would guess you're talking about the data and all that? 1991 01:19:03.371 --> 01:19:05.073 I mean I mean, you guys are all here also. 1992 01:19:05.073 --> 01:19:05.974 I mean, collaborate. 1993 01:19:05.974 --> 01:19:06.141 I mean, 1994 01:19:06.141 --> 01:19:07.909 what would you like to get from this group 1995 01:19:07.909 --> 01:19:09.478 and what would you like to get from NASA 1996 01:19:09.478 --> 01:19:11.480 that will make, you know, things even better? 1997 01:19:11.480 --> 01:19:12.681 The story even more interesting, 1998 01:19:12.681 --> 01:19:14.750 making you guys think here at NASA, 1999 01:19:14.750 --> 01:19:16.284 the stuff you really like to get a hold of the years. 2000 01:19:18.754 --> 01:19:20.956 I mean, not, not physically, but I mean, we, we just. 2001 01:19:20.956 --> 01:19:24.626 We discussed, um, just earlier, you know, 2002 01:19:24.760 --> 01:19:26.995 what else is in those? Right. 2003 01:19:27.195 --> 01:19:29.931 I mean, if there are air inclusions 2004 01:19:30.232 --> 01:19:33.635 that can give us hints of what that paleo atmosphere 2005 01:19:33.802 --> 01:19:38.106 was like in terms of carbon dioxide levels, methane levels. 2006 01:19:38.340 --> 01:19:41.343 I, you know, it it's I mean, like, just like in 2007 01:19:41.376 --> 01:19:43.979 an ice core, you know, we preserve these bubbles, 2008 01:19:44.946 --> 01:19:46.581 you know, that go back a million years. 2009 01:19:46.581 --> 01:19:46.748 Okay. 2010 01:19:46.748 --> 01:19:49.351 This is this is another this is another level, of course. 2011 01:19:49.351 --> 01:19:52.821 But but if if there if there is air that can be analyzed, 2012 01:19:53.388 --> 01:19:57.526 that's that would be that would be a huge a huge 2013 01:19:58.693 --> 01:20:00.595 input into what we're doing, 2014 01:20:00.595 --> 01:20:03.031 because we know that, you know, at that period. 2015 01:20:03.231 --> 01:20:03.732 Right. 2016 01:20:04.032 --> 01:20:05.934 You know, the kind of end Cretaceous time 2017 01:20:05.934 --> 01:20:09.805 climate was changing even before the impact happened, 2018 01:20:10.038 --> 01:20:12.440 that there were there were climate changes. And 2019 01:20:13.542 --> 01:20:14.976 and, you know, this is a long period. 2020 01:20:14.976 --> 01:20:17.712 There's lots of other things that happened in the Cretaceous, 2021 01:20:18.280 --> 01:20:20.148 the ocean, anoxic events and, 2022 01:20:20.148 --> 01:20:21.616 you know, the peak Cretaceous times. 2023 01:20:21.616 --> 01:20:23.051 But there were things happening 2024 01:20:23.051 --> 01:20:25.954 right then that that we don't really understand. 2025 01:20:25.954 --> 01:20:28.323 You know, it was it was it related to tectonic changes, 2026 01:20:28.356 --> 01:20:33.128 you know, closures of various seaways, the sea in Europe? 2027 01:20:33.862 --> 01:20:36.031 You know, it's very it's unclear. 2028 01:20:36.498 --> 01:20:38.200 And so there's a lot of focus on 2029 01:20:38.200 --> 01:20:40.368 what was happening immediately before the impact. 2030 01:20:40.535 --> 01:20:43.138 But then to have, you know, like examples 2031 01:20:43.972 --> 01:20:44.940 that could really kind of ground 2032 01:20:44.940 --> 01:20:47.275 truth, some of those speculations 2033 01:20:47.275 --> 01:20:49.311 would be of enormous interest. 2034 01:20:49.311 --> 01:20:53.782 And then you have the the things that could evaluate 2035 01:20:54.115 --> 01:20:57.452 how well our simulations are working, right? 2036 01:20:57.452 --> 01:20:59.721 So, you know, so we put in these assumptions, 2037 01:20:59.721 --> 01:21:00.055 we run 2038 01:21:00.055 --> 01:21:03.291 these models of various kinds, and you'd have to string them 2039 01:21:03.291 --> 01:21:05.760 all together, you know, kind of one after the other. 2040 01:21:05.760 --> 01:21:07.796 And then, you know, okay, well, we predict 2041 01:21:07.796 --> 01:21:08.797 this may have happened 2042 01:21:08.797 --> 01:21:11.466 all this tell us from the data which one it was. 2043 01:21:11.700 --> 01:21:13.768 Right. And then we can kind of constrain things coming back. 2044 01:21:14.269 --> 01:21:16.404 And so so those kinds of things like, 2045 01:21:16.404 --> 01:21:18.773 you know, things like temperature is things like 2046 01:21:18.773 --> 01:21:21.810 know water isotopes or you know, all sorts of, 2047 01:21:22.344 --> 01:21:23.378 you know, the, 2048 01:21:23.378 --> 01:21:25.146 you know, how much burning there was, how much 2049 01:21:25.146 --> 01:21:26.948 how much charcoal you find. 2050 01:21:26.948 --> 01:21:28.917 Those are the kinds of things that are 2051 01:21:28.917 --> 01:21:31.319 that are really key for evaluating 2052 01:21:31.853 --> 01:21:35.023 our kind of suppositions of more than that. 2053 01:21:35.023 --> 01:21:35.190 Right? 2054 01:21:35.190 --> 01:21:37.425 I mean, you don't have all of the little bits of amber 2055 01:21:37.425 --> 01:21:39.794 that you're going to find these things that that site has. 2056 01:21:40.195 --> 01:21:42.297 We've only seen the tip of the iceberg, 2057 01:21:42.731 --> 01:21:45.033 only the tip of the iceberg every single season 2058 01:21:45.500 --> 01:21:47.469 that we go out there and that the other research 2059 01:21:47.469 --> 01:21:49.638 groups from other universities join us out there. 2060 01:21:50.071 --> 01:21:52.707 Something is found that we've never seen before 2061 01:21:52.707 --> 01:21:54.809 and it carries the research forward. 2062 01:21:54.809 --> 01:21:56.244 And we were just having a conversation 2063 01:21:56.244 --> 01:21:58.179 before about nondestructive analysis. 2064 01:21:58.179 --> 01:22:02.017 I can think of a whole host of things that would be amazing 2065 01:22:02.017 --> 01:22:04.286 for collaborative work, on the nondestructive analysis, 2066 01:22:04.286 --> 01:22:06.554 on the ejecta and the other items here. 2067 01:22:06.788 --> 01:22:09.858 That would be they would offer volumes of data. 2068 01:22:10.125 --> 01:22:13.995 And with the hydro modeling in terms of of better 2069 01:22:13.995 --> 01:22:17.032 modeling of the of the dynamics of the surge wave, 2070 01:22:17.799 --> 01:22:20.835 that's something that is an amazing project 2071 01:22:21.069 --> 01:22:23.138 that could probably lead to multiple papers, 2072 01:22:23.138 --> 01:22:24.005 you know, down the road. 2073 01:22:25.073 --> 01:22:26.374 And I think there's another aspect, 2074 01:22:26.374 --> 01:22:28.476 which is Roberts already talked about it, 2075 01:22:28.476 --> 01:22:29.244 which is, 2076 01:22:29.244 --> 01:22:32.514 you know, this is one cosmic event recorded in Earth history 2077 01:22:32.514 --> 01:22:34.616 with all the climate and other implications. 2078 01:22:34.616 --> 01:22:36.051 But there's others. 2079 01:22:36.051 --> 01:22:38.920 I mean, recently the Hiawatha structure in Greenland was 2080 01:22:39.621 --> 01:22:41.723 identified as being relevant to this 2081 01:22:42.090 --> 01:22:43.625 transitional period of time, 2082 01:22:43.625 --> 01:22:45.927 you know, into the PG, the paleo gene. 2083 01:22:46.695 --> 01:22:48.330 We have others where there were mass 2084 01:22:48.330 --> 01:22:50.332 extinctions observed of different magnitude. 2085 01:22:50.565 --> 01:22:53.835 The Oligocene that puppy guy the promote Triassic further back. 2086 01:22:54.102 --> 01:22:56.404 These are the Earth record as the chronology 2087 01:22:56.705 --> 01:22:59.541 of the solar system that we use relative to the moon 2088 01:22:59.541 --> 01:23:00.976 and other chronometers. 2089 01:23:00.976 --> 01:23:03.111 This is critical for planetary sciences. 2090 01:23:03.111 --> 01:23:04.579 So I think Robert's 2091 01:23:04.579 --> 01:23:06.247 data and materials 2092 01:23:06.247 --> 01:23:08.350 can be analyzed through some of those techniques 2093 01:23:08.350 --> 01:23:08.817 he mentioned, 2094 01:23:08.817 --> 01:23:10.585 which we're now using on lunar rocks, 2095 01:23:10.585 --> 01:23:13.288 some of which have been, you know, stored away for 50 years. 2096 01:23:13.521 --> 01:23:16.891 So we have the better tools so that cross, 2097 01:23:18.560 --> 01:23:20.628 you know, cross-disciplinary 2098 01:23:20.628 --> 01:23:22.464 collaboration, I think would be very fertile. 2099 01:23:22.464 --> 01:23:24.466 And I have a question for you which relates to that, 2100 01:23:24.466 --> 01:23:26.601 which is so what about the pollen? 2101 01:23:26.601 --> 01:23:29.304 You've now got Amber, you've got zeros, 2102 01:23:29.337 --> 01:23:31.873 you've got pieces of the impacting object. 2103 01:23:32.674 --> 01:23:33.575 Then there's pollen, 2104 01:23:33.575 --> 01:23:36.711 which is a very good indicator of many aspects of environment 2105 01:23:36.978 --> 01:23:39.547 and really robust one in the earth history 2106 01:23:40.048 --> 01:23:41.349 you've talked about a little bit, 2107 01:23:41.349 --> 01:23:44.152 but maybe that's an area of very exciting 2108 01:23:44.753 --> 01:23:47.022 sample analysis and it's underexplored right now 2109 01:23:47.022 --> 01:23:48.990 too, because the pollen so far, 2110 01:23:48.990 --> 01:23:51.359 yes, it exists at the site, beautifully preserved. 2111 01:23:51.659 --> 01:23:54.362 And thus far it has been explored 2112 01:23:54.362 --> 01:23:56.464 mainly as a bio stratigraphic marker. 2113 01:23:56.464 --> 01:23:59.067 So we're establishing where we are in time. 2114 01:23:59.467 --> 01:24:03.304 But in terms of working out the biota back then 2115 01:24:03.304 --> 01:24:06.975 and the the turnover of the ecological turnover 2116 01:24:06.975 --> 01:24:08.276 and what happened 2117 01:24:08.276 --> 01:24:10.678 right at that moment and then up into the lower 2118 01:24:10.678 --> 01:24:12.213 paleo gene that has been done over 2119 01:24:12.213 --> 01:24:14.816 there yet and it is ripe for the study. 2120 01:24:14.816 --> 01:24:16.251 So I was going to ask before, when 2121 01:24:16.251 --> 01:24:18.319 do you want to get started? But. 2122 01:24:18.319 --> 01:24:20.321 You know, with the pollen, too, I think 2123 01:24:21.823 --> 01:24:24.192 we're already in the danger. 2124 01:24:24.325 --> 01:24:26.795 So I'm ruminating on 2125 01:24:26.795 --> 01:24:29.330 this is like the archetype of hands on research. 2126 01:24:29.631 --> 01:24:30.131 Quack, quack, quack 2127 01:24:30.432 --> 01:24:31.599 with your tools and dig 2128 01:24:31.599 --> 01:24:33.802 in a little bit into the rock and see what you find. 2129 01:24:34.235 --> 01:24:34.569 And then 2130 01:24:34.569 --> 01:24:35.103 if you're lucky, 2131 01:24:35.103 --> 01:24:35.904 you notice that there's 2132 01:24:35.904 --> 01:24:37.572 this little brown layer and you realize it's 2133 01:24:37.572 --> 01:24:39.941 a dinosaur skin and you're really super careful. 2134 01:24:40.408 --> 01:24:41.876 But I keep thinking, 2135 01:24:41.876 --> 01:24:44.212 isn't there something high tech engineering could give you? 2136 01:24:44.546 --> 01:24:46.881 And I don't know what you need, but I sure think 2137 01:24:47.482 --> 01:24:49.617 it's worth finding it, whatever it is, 2138 01:24:49.617 --> 01:24:52.087 because this is so important and it's so precious 2139 01:24:52.353 --> 01:24:53.688 and there's no other site like this 2140 01:24:53.688 --> 01:24:55.690 in the entire planet that we know of. 2141 01:24:55.690 --> 01:24:57.358 So we need to get everything we can. 2142 01:24:57.358 --> 01:25:00.161 And so before it all washes away, 2143 01:25:01.696 --> 01:25:02.630 let's find it and 2144 01:25:02.630 --> 01:25:04.966 let's give you all the help we can possibly imagine. 2145 01:25:05.700 --> 01:25:08.136 I'll never try to turn away any 2146 01:25:08.136 --> 01:25:11.272 really, really, really good recommendations on that end. 2147 01:25:11.272 --> 01:25:12.040 And putting 2148 01:25:12.040 --> 01:25:15.310 on the thinking caps, because you're absolutely right, 2149 01:25:15.810 --> 01:25:19.013 with the fossils and their mode of preservation, they're there. 2150 01:25:19.013 --> 01:25:20.248 They're very fragile. 2151 01:25:20.248 --> 01:25:22.650 They're they're almost impossible to prepare 2152 01:25:22.917 --> 01:25:24.319 and to stabilize. 2153 01:25:24.319 --> 01:25:25.720 We have had to develop 2154 01:25:25.720 --> 01:25:29.357 new techniques and excavation and stabilization for these 2155 01:25:29.591 --> 01:25:31.059 that are different than what you normally use. 2156 01:25:31.059 --> 01:25:32.494 And they'll creek formation. 2157 01:25:32.494 --> 01:25:35.396 They dictate that we have to do that. 2158 01:25:35.830 --> 01:25:38.600 And basically through that process 2159 01:25:38.600 --> 01:25:41.302 we have developed incredibly, 2160 01:25:41.302 --> 01:25:44.506 painfully detailed excavation practices 2161 01:25:44.739 --> 01:25:48.476 going centimeter by centimeter and then stabilizing as we go 2162 01:25:49.744 --> 01:25:51.613 to accomplish this. 2163 01:25:51.613 --> 01:25:52.313 But we're 2164 01:25:52.313 --> 01:25:54.282 always trying to up our game 2165 01:25:54.282 --> 01:25:55.383 and we are always trying 2166 01:25:55.383 --> 01:25:57.652 to refine these methods and find better methods 2167 01:25:57.785 --> 01:25:59.954 and really think outside the box. 2168 01:25:59.954 --> 01:26:01.489 We recently 2169 01:26:01.489 --> 01:26:05.126 got some of the specimens that were almost impossible to move 2170 01:26:05.393 --> 01:26:08.763 because you put plaster jackets on the matrix. 2171 01:26:08.930 --> 01:26:12.867 But if that is saturated with moisture, you can't move it. 2172 01:26:12.867 --> 01:26:15.370 It's going to be basically the consistency of peanut butter. 2173 01:26:15.370 --> 01:26:17.805 It'll it'll get destroyed. So what do we do? 2174 01:26:17.906 --> 01:26:20.175 You can't put glue on that because the glue is not going 2175 01:26:20.175 --> 01:26:22.277 to go. It's already saturated with something else. 2176 01:26:22.277 --> 01:26:25.713 So we decided, okay, we'll use whatever it's saturated in, 2177 01:26:25.713 --> 01:26:27.782 which is water to then stabilize it. 2178 01:26:27.782 --> 01:26:30.618 So we flash froze this block with liquid nitrogen, 2179 01:26:31.286 --> 01:26:33.054 turned it into a solid block, 2180 01:26:33.054 --> 01:26:35.323 stabilized it that way, moved it out. 2181 01:26:35.323 --> 01:26:38.226 And then we thought it in a controlled environment 2182 01:26:38.326 --> 01:26:39.494 before research 2183 01:26:39.494 --> 01:26:42.797 and we determined via SDM analysis and the 2184 01:26:43.031 --> 01:26:46.267 thin sections that that was not harmful to the fossil. 2185 01:26:46.601 --> 01:26:48.703 So we need a lot more, 2186 01:26:48.736 --> 01:26:51.039 a lot more thinking outside the box like that 2187 01:26:51.039 --> 01:26:53.208 and it's not just going to come from us. 2188 01:26:53.575 --> 01:26:55.944 So you are liquid nitrogen factory on site. 2189 01:26:56.811 --> 01:26:59.581 I was thinking about you and I get liquid nitrogen. 2190 01:26:59.581 --> 01:27:00.481 We got liquid nitrogen. 2191 01:27:00.481 --> 01:27:02.083 We know how to do that. 2192 01:27:02.083 --> 01:27:03.051 I was actually thinking about 2193 01:27:03.051 --> 01:27:05.453 I can work on stabilizing organic compounds, 2194 01:27:05.453 --> 01:27:08.022 which is useful in the Mars analysis. 2195 01:27:08.289 --> 01:27:09.557 I mean, in that case, you're basically going 2196 01:27:09.557 --> 01:27:12.160 molecule by molecule to stabilize the sample. 2197 01:27:12.260 --> 01:27:13.661 That's something people do here 2198 01:27:13.661 --> 01:27:15.063 that would be absolutely useful. 2199 01:27:15.063 --> 01:27:15.763 Absolutely. 2200 01:27:15.763 --> 01:27:17.665 Also, the new classes of topographic 2201 01:27:17.665 --> 01:27:21.402 imaging at outcrop scale that are now being used 2202 01:27:21.402 --> 01:27:22.570 in certain sectors, 2203 01:27:22.570 --> 01:27:24.672 including in geophysical exploration, 2204 01:27:24.973 --> 01:27:28.009 could image at centimeter scale in a three dimensional volume 2205 01:27:28.376 --> 01:27:30.311 into a target depending on wavelength. 2206 01:27:30.311 --> 01:27:32.080 So that could characterize 2207 01:27:32.080 --> 01:27:34.048 your site before you've actually dug into it. 2208 01:27:34.048 --> 01:27:36.451 The biology group, I think, needs to be very helpful. 2209 01:27:37.151 --> 01:27:38.620 Yeah, absolutely. 2210 01:27:38.620 --> 01:27:40.321 It was speaking of astrobiology and stuff 2211 01:27:40.321 --> 01:27:41.656 in the search for life outside. 2212 01:27:41.656 --> 01:27:42.390 So I mean, 2213 01:27:42.523 --> 01:27:44.325 understanding impacts like this here, 2214 01:27:44.325 --> 01:27:46.060 how does that help us understand other planets better? 2215 01:27:46.060 --> 01:27:47.996 I know that's something you think a lot about. 2216 01:27:47.996 --> 01:27:51.899 Well, I'm just struck because on Mars and Venus, we have two 2217 01:27:51.933 --> 01:27:54.702 excellent class impacts in the more and more recent 2218 01:27:55.169 --> 01:27:56.938 eras of their record. 2219 01:27:56.938 --> 01:27:59.440 And we use those on the moon to characterize all time blocks. 2220 01:27:59.707 --> 01:28:00.742 We see them on Mars. 2221 01:28:00.742 --> 01:28:04.212 We wonder about them in this, you know, more recent history, 2222 01:28:04.412 --> 01:28:06.314 historical period of Mars 2223 01:28:06.314 --> 01:28:07.715 as not something from Gale 2224 01:28:07.715 --> 01:28:09.284 Crater three and a half billion years ago, 2225 01:28:09.284 --> 01:28:10.718 but something from the last billion. 2226 01:28:10.718 --> 01:28:13.755 And then there's Venus, where there's only one in this size 2227 01:28:13.755 --> 01:28:16.557 class, maybe two if you get sketchy. 2228 01:28:16.858 --> 01:28:20.628 So, wow, what did Venus did, as some climate models suggest 2229 01:28:20.628 --> 01:28:25.133 done, in fact, at Gavin's group have persistent surface 2230 01:28:25.133 --> 01:28:26.901 waters for billions of years 2231 01:28:26.901 --> 01:28:29.370 and that suppressed the record of impact. 2232 01:28:29.370 --> 01:28:30.571 And the only ones we see 2233 01:28:30.571 --> 01:28:32.740 are those that happened later that are more recent, 2234 01:28:32.740 --> 01:28:35.677 that are the sixth lives of Venus or other worlds. 2235 01:28:35.677 --> 01:28:37.578 And I just thinking of Mars and Venus 2236 01:28:37.578 --> 01:28:41.949 because they're climate relevant objects nearby and exoplanets 2237 01:28:41.949 --> 01:28:44.719 where John's telescope and others will be able to start 2238 01:28:44.719 --> 01:28:47.055 ferreting out those classes of objects. 2239 01:28:47.455 --> 01:28:49.691 You know, they might have reflected 2240 01:28:49.691 --> 01:28:52.593 an impact preserved aspect of atmospheric change. 2241 01:28:52.894 --> 01:28:54.862 Unbelievable the connections. 2242 01:28:54.862 --> 01:28:56.564 And so we need Earth Ground Truth 2243 01:28:56.564 --> 01:28:58.199 to apply that message forward. 2244 01:28:58.199 --> 01:28:59.300 And you've done that. 2245 01:28:59.300 --> 01:29:01.536 And I think we can learn from you 2246 01:29:01.536 --> 01:29:03.538 and we can continue doing it forward. Right? 2247 01:29:03.538 --> 01:29:04.305 Right, right. 2248 01:29:04.305 --> 01:29:04.939 Yeah. Not just me. 2249 01:29:04.939 --> 01:29:06.708 It's a massive, massive collaboration. 2250 01:29:06.708 --> 01:29:09.077 Lots of women, men working on this is all good. 2251 01:29:09.677 --> 01:29:12.180 I think we've got a plan going forward and I guess emails 2252 01:29:12.280 --> 01:29:13.815 want to say thing before we wrap up our discussion. 2253 01:29:15.850 --> 01:29:17.085 When can we visit? 2254 01:29:17.085 --> 01:29:18.453 One incredible day. That's right. 2255 01:29:18.453 --> 01:29:19.554 Well, we'll start making plans. 2256 01:29:19.554 --> 01:29:21.889 It's mushy right now. 2257 01:29:22.090 --> 01:29:23.524 And that's the technical term. Right. 2258 01:29:23.524 --> 01:29:24.592 But. But. 2259 01:29:25.693 --> 01:29:26.728 The sky's the limit. 2260 01:29:26.728 --> 01:29:29.330 Let me know when that will wrap it up. 2261 01:29:29.364 --> 01:29:30.331 Thank you so much for joining 2262 01:29:30.331 --> 01:29:33.201 this exciting day here at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. 2263 01:29:33.434 --> 01:29:35.036 Thank you very much. Thank you.