The CretaceousPaleogene ("K-Pg" or "K-T") extinction event around 66 million years ago wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. Such Konservat-Lagersttten are rare because they require special depositional circumstances. Melanie During suspects Robert DePalma wanted to claim credit for identifying the dinosaur-killing asteroid's season of impact and fabricated data in order to be able to publish a paper . It also proves that geology and paleontology is still a science of discovery, even in the 21 st Century." Using radiometric dating, stratigraphy, fossil pollen, index fossils, and a capping layer of iridium-rich clay, the research team laboriously determined in a previous study led by DePalma in 2019 that the Tanis site dated from precisely . Although they stopped short of saying the irregularities clearly point to fraud, mostbut not allsaid they are so concerning that DePalmas team must come up with the raw data behind its analyses if team members want to clear themselves. [17] This would resolve conflicting evidence that huge water movements had occurred in the Hell Creek region near Tanis much less than an hour after impact, although the first megatsunamis from the impact zone could not have arrived at the site for almost a full day. "I've been asked, 'Why should we care about this? "I hope this is all legitI'm just not 100% convinced yet," says Thomas Tobin, a geologist at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. While some lived near a river, lake, lagoon, or another place where sediment was found, many thrived in other habitats. The first documents a turtle fossil found at Tanis, killed by impalement by a tree branch, and found in the upper of two units of surge deposit, bracketed by ejecta. The paper cleared peer review at PNAS within about 4 months. In turn, the fish remains revealed the season their lives endedergo, the precise timing of the devastating asteroid strike to the Yucatn Peninsula. The Dakotaraptor fossil, next to a paleontologist for scale. It could be just one factor in a series of environmental events that led to their extinction. DePalma has not made public the raw, machine-produced data underlying his analyses. It needs to be explained. Eighteen months before publication of the peer-reviewed PNAS paper in 2019[1] DePalma and his colleagues presented two conference papers on fossil finds at Tanis on 23 October 2017 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America. He suggested that the impact caused huge seiches (or tsunamis), which allowed the mosasaur tooth to travel from fresh water to that spot, along with freshwater sturgeon that may have choked on glassy pieces from the collision, reported Science. (Courtesy of Robert DePalma) You and your team have made some extraordinary finds, including an exquisitely preserved leg of a dinosaur that you believed died on the very day of the asteroid impact. The end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact triggered Earth's last mass-extinction, extinguishing ~ 75% of species diversity and facilitating a global ecological shift to mammal-dominated biomes. Robert DePalma uncovers a preserved articulated body of a 65-million-year-old fish at Tanis. paper] may be fabricated, created to fit an already known conclusion. (She also posted the statement on the OSF Preprints server today.). Searching in the hills of North Dakota, palaeontologist Robert DePalma makes an incredible . There is still much unknown about these prehistoric animals. According to the Science article, During suspects that DePalma, eager to claim credit for the finding, wanted to scoop herand made up the data to stake his claim.. "Robert has been meticulous, borderline archaeological in his excavation approach," says Manning, who has been working at Tanis from the beginning. But the fossils also held clues to the season of the catastrophe, During found. Its not clear where McKinney conducted these analyses, and raw data was not included in the published paper. "No one is an expert on all of those subjects," he says, so it's going to take a few months for the research community to digest the findings and evaluate whether they support such extraordinary conclusions. [18], In 2004, DePalma was studying a small site in the well-known Hell Creek Formation, containing numerous layers of thin sediment, creating a geological record of great detail. The three-metre problem encompasses that . This dinosaur, a giant reptilian, lived during the Early Cretaceous period in oceans. Robert DEPALMA, Postgraduate Researcher | Cited by 253 | of The University of Manchester, Manchester | Read 18 publications | Contact Robert DEPALMA DePalma believed that the fossils found in Tanis, which sat on the KT layer, became collected there just after the asteroid struck the earth. Robert DePalma made headlines again in 2021 with the discovery of a leg from a Thescelosaurus dinosaur at Tanis, reported The Washington Post. Could it be a comet, asteroid, or meteor that crashed into the planet, and the reverberations ended the reign of the dinosaurs? Although fish fossils are normally deposited horizontally, at Tanis, fish carcasses and tree trunks are preserved haphazardly, some in near vertical orientations, suggesting they were caught up in a large volume of mud and sand that was dumped nearly instantaneously. The nerds travel to the final day of the dinosaurs reign with paleontologist Robert DePalma and the legendary Tanis Site. DePalma submitted his own paper to Scientific Reports in late August 2021, with an entirely different team of authors, including his Ph.D. supervisor at the University of Manchester, Phillip Manning. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. Episode . Nicklas also indicates that "in 2012 we decided to try to find an academic paleontologist who had the necessary interest, time, and the ability to excavate the site A good friend of ours, Ronnie Frithiof, recommended Robert DePalma. Please make a tax-deductible gift today. The paleontologist believed that this new information further supported the theory that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs along with 75 percent of the animals and plants on Earth 66 million year . The Hell Creek Formation was at this time very low-lying or partly submerged land at the northern end of the seaway, and the Chicxulub impact occurred in the shallow seas at the southern end, approximately 3,050km (1,900mi) from the site. December 10, 2021 Source: . Manning points out that all fossils described in the PNAS paper have been deposited in recognized collections and are available for other researchers to study. The skull of the scarred Edmontosaurus also showed signs of trauma, and from the size and shape of the marks on the bone, Rothschild and fellow co-author Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the . But not everyone has fully embraced the find, perhaps in part because it was first announced to the world last week in an article in The New Yorker. AAAS is a partner of HINARI, AGORA, OARE, CHORUS, CLOCKSS, CrossRef and COUNTER. Miami Dade does not have an operational mass spectrometer, suggesting McKinney would have had to perform the isotope analyses underlying the paper at another facility. Drawing on research from paleontologist Robert DePalma, we follow DePalma's dig over the course of three years at a new site in North Dakota, unearthing remarkably well-preserved fossilised . A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 378, Issue 6625. On 2 December, according to an email forwarded to Science, the editor handling DePalmas paper at Scientific Reports formally responded to During and Ahlberg for the first time, During says. As of April 2019, reported findings include: The hundreds of fish remains are distributed by size, and generally show evidence of tetany (a body posture related to suffocation in fish), suggesting strongly that they were all killed indiscriminately by a common suffocating cause that affected the entire population. Robert DePalmashown here giving a talk at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Aprilpublished a paper in December 2021 showing the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs struck Earth in the spring. Any water-borne waves would have arrived between 18 and 26 hours later,[1]:p.24 long after the microtektites had already fallen back to earth, and far too late to leave the geological record found at the site. In December 2021, a team of paleontologists published data . "That some competitors have cast Robert in a negative light is unfortunate and unfair," says another co-author, Mark Richards, a geophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. "Those few meters of rock record the wrath of the Chicxulub impact and the devastation it caused." Study leader Robert DePalma conducts field research at the Tanis site. Traduzioni in contesto per "i paleontologi che" in italiano-inglese da Reverso Context: Ma i paleontologi che studiano dettagliatamente i denti fossilizzati di questi animali hanno sospettato che non erano quello semplice. Impact Theory of Mass Extinctions and the Invertebrate Fossil Record, The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. Geologists have theorized that the impact, near what is now the town of Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatn Peninsula, played a role in the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, when all the dinosaurs (except birds) and much other life on Earth vanished. The mud and sand are dotted with glassy spherulesmany caught in the gills of the fishisotopically dated to 65.8 million years ago. Other papers describing the site and its fossils are in progress. [22] The discovery received widespread media coverage from 29 March 2019. But others question DePalma's interpretations. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. It can be divided into two layers, a bottom layer about 0.5m thick ("unit 1"), and a top layer about 0.8m thick (unit 2), capped by a 1 2cm layer of impactite tonstein that is indistinguishable from other dual layered KPg impact ejection materials found in Hells Creek, and finally a layer around 6cm thick of plant remains. That same year, encouraged by a Dutch award for the thesis, she began to prepare a journal article. The first two were conference papers presented in January of that year. A newly discovered winged raptor may have belonged to a lineage of dinosaurs that grew large after . Instead, the layers had never fully solidified, the fossils at the site were fragile, and everything appeared to have been laid down in a single large flood. Both Landman and Cochran confirmed to Science they had reviewed the data supplied by DePalma in January, apparently following Scientific Reportss request for additional clarification on the issues raised by During and Ahlberg immediately after the papers publication. Based on the . In a 6 January letter to the journal editor handling his manuscript, which he forwarded to Science, DePalma acknowledged that the line graphs in his paper were plotted by hand instead of with graphing software, as is the norm in the field. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. In December 2021, DePalma and his colleagues published an important paper . Melanie During suspects Robert DePalma wanted to claim credit for identifying the dinosaur-killing asteroids season of impact and fabricated data in order to be able to publish a paper before she did. The media article was published several days before an accompanying research paper on the site came out in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Could this provide evidence to the theory that an asteroid did indeed cause the mass extinction of the dinosaurs? The former Purdue President is now 76 years of age. Robert DePalma, a curator at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, found some rare fossils close to Bowman, North Dakota, in 2013 that led to a hypothesis of his own. Bottom left, micro-CT image showing cutaway of clay-altered ejecta spherule with internal core of unaltered impact glass. DePalma gave the name Tanis to both the site and the river. [2][3] The full paper introducing Tanis was widely covered in worldwide media on 29 March 2019, in advance of its official publication three days later. The plotted line graphs and figures in DePalmas paper contain numerous irregularities, During and Ahlberg claimincluding missing and duplicated data points and nonsensical error barssuggesting they were manually constructed, rather than produced by data analysis software. [1]:p.8 Instead, the initial papers on Tanis conclude that much faster earthquake waves, the primary waves travelling through rock at about 5km/s (11,000mph),[1]:p.8 probably reached Hell Creek within six minutes, and quickly caused massive water surges known as seiches in the shallow waters close to Tanis. These fossils were delivered for research to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. . Tanis is a site of paleontological interest in southwestern North Dakota, United States. Robert DePalma is a paleontologist who holds the lease to the Tanis site and controls access to it. The findings each preclude correlation with either the Cantapeta or Breien, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 16:30. Scientists believe they have been given an extraordinary view of the last day of the dinosaurs after they discovered the fossil of an animal they believe . The 112-mile Chicxulub crater, located on the Yucatn Peninsula, contains the same mineral iridium as the KT layer, and it's often cited as further proof that a giant asteroid was responsible for killing dinosaurs (perBoredom Therapy). The situation was first reported by the publication Science last month. Also, there is little evidence on the detailed effects of the event on Earth and its biosphere. DePalma may also flout some norms of paleontology, according to The New Yorker, by retaining rights to control his specimens even after they have been incorporated into university and museum collections. Tanis is a rich fossil site that contains a bevy of marine creatures that apparently died in the immediate fallout of the asteroid impact, or the KT extinction. Based on the chemical isotope signatures and bone growth patterns found in fossilized fish collected at Tanis, a renowned fossil site in North Dakota, During had concluded the asteroid that ended the dinosaur era 65 million years ago struck Earth when it was spring in the Northern Hemisphere. When asked for more information on the situation on January 3, a spokesperson for Scientific Reports said there were no updates. Now, a different group of researchers is accusing the former group of faking their data; the journal that published the research has added an editors note to the paper saying the data is under review. [1]:p.8 The site formed part of a bend in an ancient river on the westward shore of the seaway,[1]:p.8192[4]:pp.5,6,23 and was flooded with great force by these waves, which carried sea, land, freshwater animals and plants, and other debris several miles inland. ", "Tanis exhibits a depositional scenario that was unusual in being highly conducive to exceptional (largely three dimensional) preservation of many articulated carcasses (Konservat-Lagersttte). Now, Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History and a graduate student at the University of Kansas, claims to have unveiled an unprecedented time capsule of this . The extinction event caused by this impact began the Cenozoic, in which mammals - including humans - would eventually come to dominate life on Earth. Page numbers in this section refer to those papers. All of these factors seemed strange and confused the paleontologists. If they can provide the raw data, its just a sloppy paper. Tobin says the PNAS paper is densely packed with detail from paleontology, sedimentology, geochemistry, and more. Manning confirms rumors that the study was initially submitted to a journal with a higher impact factor before it was accepted at PNAS. Using the same formula, the Chicxulub earthquakes may have released up to 1412 times as much energy as the Chile event. More: Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense, We may earn a commission from links on this page. "His line between commercial and academic work is not as clean as it is for other people," says one geologist who asked not to be named. This whole site is the KT boundary We have the whole KT event preserved in these sediments. Fragile remains spanning the layers of debris show that the site was laid down in a single event over a short timespan. American, said in a 2019 tweet that the findings from the site "have met with a good deal of skepticism from the paleontology community." . This is misconduct, During wrote in an email to Gizmodo. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. At the site, called Tanis, the researchers say they have discovered the chaotic debris left when tsunamilike waves surged up a river valley. Since 2013, Sackler has resided at a private property on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 378, Issue 6625. Ritchie Hall | Earth, Energy & Environment Center 1414 Naismith Drive, Room 254 Lawrence, KS 66045 geology@ku.edu 785-864-4974 They did a few years of digging, uncovering beautiful, fragile sh . During, whose paper was accepted by Nature shortly afterward and published in February, suspects that DePalma, eager to claim credit for the finding, wanted to scoop herand made up the data to stake his claim. Some recent examples include the 1964 Alaskan earthquake (seiches in Puerto Rico),[14] the 1950 Assam-Tibet earthquake (India/China) (seiches in England and Norway), the 2010 Chile earthquake (seiches in Louisiana). [23], As of April 2019, several other papers were stated to be in preparation, with further papers anticipated by DePalma and co-authors, and some by visiting researchers.[24]. Instead, much faster seismic waves from the magnitude 10 11.5 earthquakes[1]:p.8 probably reached the Hell Creek area as soon as ten minutes after the impact, creating seiche waves between 10100m (33328ft) high in the Western Interior Seaway. Could NASA's Electric Airplane Make Aviation More Sustainable? 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. The site, after all, does not conclusively prove that the asteroid's impact actually caused the dinosaurs' demise, reported Science. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! Last month, During published a comment on PubPeer alleging that the data in DePalmas paper may be fabricated. [13], The formation contains a series of fresh and brackish-water clays, mudstones, and sandstones deposited during the Maastrichtian and Danian (respectively, the end of the Cretaceous and the beginning of the Paleogene periods) by fluvial activity in fluctuating river channels and deltas and very occasional peaty swamp deposits along the low-lying eastern continental margin fronting the late Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway. This further evidences the violent nature of the event. Additional fossils, including this beautifully preserved fish tail, have been found at the Tanis site in North Dakota. Robert DePalma published a study in December 2021 that said the dinosaurs went extinct in the springtime - but a former colleague has alleged that it's based on fake data. Jan Smit first presented a paper describing the Tanis site, its association with the K-Pg boundary event and associated fossil discoveries, including the presence of glass spherules from the Chicxulub impact clustered in the gill rakers of acipenciform fishes and also found in amber. A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth's most recent mass extinction event. Isaac Schultz. Robert DePalma: We know there would have been a tremendous air blast from the impact and probably a loud roaring noise accompanied with that similar to standing next to a 747 jet on the runway. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. [5] The original discoverers of the site (Rob Sula and Steve Nicklas), who worked the site for several years, recognized its scientific importance and offered it to DePalma as he had some previous experience with working on fish sites. [18], DePalma began excavating systematically in 2012[1]:11 and quickly found the site to contain very unusual and promising features. [1] Simultaneous media disclosure had been intended via the New Yorker, but the magazine learned that a rival newspaper had heard about the story, and asked permission to publish early to avoid being scooped by waiting until the paper was published. The formation is named for early studies at Hell Creek, located near Jordan, Montana, and it was designated as a National Natural Landmark in 1966. He did send Science a document containing what he says are McKinneys data. Published May 11, 2022 6:09PM (EDT) We're seeing mass die-offs of animals and biomes that are being put through very stressful situations worldwide. When I saw [microtektites in their own impact craters], I knew this wasnt just any flood deposit. Some scientists were not happy with this proposal. Most of central North America had recently been a large shallow seaway, called the Western Interior Seaway (also known as the North American Sea or the Western Interior Sea), and parts were still submerged. A field assistant, Rudy Pascucci, left, and the paleontologist Robert DePalma, right, at DePalma's dig site. [1]:p.8193 The original paper describes the river in technical detail:[1]:Fig.1 and p.9181-8193. All rights reserved. But it's not at the asteroid's crash site. Other geologists say they can't shake a sense of suspicion about DePalma himself, who, along with his Ph.D. work, is also a curator at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History in Wellington, Florida. According to The New Yorker, DePalma also sports some off-putting paleontology practices, like keeping his discovery secret for so long and limiting other scientists' access to the site. In June 2021, paleontologist Melanie During submitted a manuscript to Nature that she suspected might create a minor scientific sensation. Han vxte upp i Boca Raton i Florida. If the team, led by Robert DePalma, a graduate student in paleontology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, is correct, it has uncovered a record of apocalyptic destruction 3000 kilometers from Chicxulub. Fish were swept up in mud and sand in the aftermath of a great wave sparked by the Chicxulub impact, paleontologists say. A fossil, after all, is only created under precise circumstances, with the dinosaur dying in a place that could preserve its remains in rock. Robert DePalma r son till tandkirurgen Robert De Plama Sr i Delray Beach. From the size of the deposits beneath the flood debris, the Tanis River was a "deep and large" river with a point bar that was towards the larger size found in Hell's Creek, suggesting a river tens or hundreds of meters wide. Boca paleontologist Robert de Palma uncovers evidence of the day the dinosaurs diedand how it connects to homo sapiens. After trying to discuss the matter with editors at Scientific Reports for nearly a year, During recently decided to make her suspicions public. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of . It's at a North Dakota cattle ranch, some 2,000 miles (3,220 km) away. They presumably formed from droplets of molten rock launched into the atmosphere at the impact site, which cooled and solidified as they plummeted back to Earth. [10][11] The impactor tore through the earth's crust, creating huge earthquakes, giant waves, and a crater 180 kilometers (112mi) wide, and blasted aloft trillions of tons of dust, debris, and climate-changing sulfates from the gypsum seabed, and it may have created firestorms worldwide. If the data were generated in a stable isotope lab, that lab had a desktop computer that recorded results, he says, and they should still be available. High-resolution x-rays revealed this paddlefish fossil from Tanis, a site in North Dakota, contained bits of glassy debris deposited shortly after the dinosaur-killing asteroid impact. 01/05/2021. By Robert Sanders, Media relations | March 29, 2019. [3] DePalma then presented a paper describing excavation of a burrow created by a small mammal that had been made "immediately following the K-Pg impact" at Tanis. And mass spectrometry revealed the paddlefishs fin bones had elevated levels of carbon-13, an isotope that is more abundant in modern paddlefishand presumably their closely related ancient relativesduring spring, when they eat more zooplankton rich in carbon-13. A researcher claims that Robert DePalma published a faulty study in order to get ahead of her own work on the Tanis fossil site. Robert DePalma (right) and Walter Alvarez (left) at the Tanis site in North Dakota. If not, well, fraud is on the table.. Robert DePalma made headlines again in 2021 with the discovery of a leg from a Thescelosaurus dinosaur at Tanis, reported The Washington Post. Does fossil site record dino-killing impact? Today, their fossils lie jumbled together at a site in North Dakota. Some scientists say this destroyed the dinosaurs; others believe they thrived during the period. "We're never going to say with 100 percent certainty that this leg came from an animal that died on that day," the scientist said to the publication. He says his team came up with the idea of using fossils isotopic signals to hunt for evidence of the asteroid impacts season long ago, and During adopted it after learning about it during her Tanis visita notion During rejects. In the early 1980s, the discovery of a clay layer rich in iridium, an element found in meteorites, at the very end of the rock record of the Cretaceous at sites around the world led researchers to link an asteroid to the End Cretaceous mass extinction. Astonishment, skepticism greet fossils claimed to record dinosaur-killing asteroid impact. posted a statement on the journal feedback website PubPeer, a document containing what he says are McKinneys data, Earliest evidence of horseback riding found in eastern cowboys, Funding woes force 500 Women Scientists to scale back operations, Lawmakers offer contrasting views on how to compete with China in science, U.K. scientists hope to regain access to EU grants after Northern Ireland deal, Astronomers stumble in diplomatic push to protect the night sky, Satellites spoiling more and more Hubble images, Pablo Neruda was poisoned to death, a new forensic report suggests, Europes well-preserved bog bodies surrender their secrets, Teens leukemia goes into remission after experimental gene-editing therapy, Paleontologist accused of fraud in paper on dino-killing asteroid, Scientist-Consultants Accuse OSI of Missing the Pattern, Journal will not retract influential paper by botanist accused of plagiarism and fraud. Paleontologist Robert DePalma, postgraduate researcher at University of Manchester UK and adjunct professor for the Florida Atlantic University Geosciences Department, gave a guest talk at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, on April 6. November 5, 2015. The site lacked the fine sediment layers he was initially looking for. In June 2021, paleontologist Melanie During submitted a manuscript to Nature that she suspected might create a minor scientific sensation. When we look at the preservation of the leg and the skin around the articulated bones, we're talking on the day of impact or right before. A bad day for dinosaurs was the subject of an engaging hour-and-a-half for both paleontologists and NASA researchers. Cochran says the format of the isotopic data does not appear unusual. "That's the first ever evidence of the interaction between life on the last day of the Cretaceous and the impact event," team member Phillip Manning, a paleontologist at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, told the publication. During and DePalma spent 10 days in the field together, unearthing fossils of several paddlefish and species closely related to modern sturgeon called acipenseriformes. We absolutely would not, and have not ever, fabricated data and/or samples to fit this or another teams results, he wrote in an email to Science. Earliest evidence of horseback riding found in eastern cowboys, Funding woes force 500 Women Scientists to scale back operations, Lawmakers offer contrasting views on how to compete with China in science, U.K. scientists hope to regain access to EU grants after Northern Ireland deal, Astronomers stumble in diplomatic push to protect the night sky, Satellites spoiling more and more Hubble images, Pablo Neruda was poisoned to death, a new forensic report suggests, Europes well-preserved bog bodies surrender their secrets, Teens leukemia goes into remission after experimental gene-editing therapy. The events at Tanis occurred far too soon after impact to be caused by the megatsunamis expected from any large impact near large bodies of water.

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