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DePalma's team says the killing is captured in forensic detail in the 1.3-meter-thick Tanis deposit, which it says formed in just a few hours, beginning perhaps 13 minutes after impact. Episode . When asked for more information on the situation on January 3, a spokesperson for Scientific Reports said there were no updates. More: Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense, We may earn a commission from links on this page. And, if they are not forthcoming, there are numerous precedents for the retraction of scholarly articles on that basis alone.. She also removed DePalma as an author from her own manuscript, then under review at Nature. Could this provide evidence to the theory that an asteroid did indeed cause the mass extinction of the dinosaurs? While DePalma corrected his claim, his reputation still took a hit. The three-metre problem encompasses that . Everything he found had been covered so quickly that details were exceptionally well preserved, and the fossils as a whole formed a very unusual collection fish fins and complete fish, tree trunks with amber, fossils in upright rather than squashed flat positions, hundreds or thousands of cartilaginous fully articulated freshwater paddlefish, sturgeon and even saltwater mosasaurs which had ended up on the same mudbank miles inland (only about four fossilized fish were previously known from the entire Hell Creek formation), fragile body parts such as complete and intact tails, ripped from the seafish's bodies and preserved inland in a manner that suggested they were covered almost immediately after death, and everywhere millions of tiny spheres of glassy material known as microtektites, the result of tiny splatters of molten material reaching the ground. Recognizing the unique nature of the site, Nicklas and Sula brought in Robert DePalma, a University of Kansas graduate student, to perform additional excavations. Three papers were published in 2021. 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. Episode #52: Your Mother Was a Vetulicolian and Your Father Smelt of Elderberries with Henry Gee . 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 . It could be just one factor in a series of environmental events that led to their extinction. Ahlberg shared her concerns. Science and AAAS are working tirelessly to provide credible, evidence-based information on the latest scientific research and policy, with extensive free coverage of the pandemic. 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. "That some competitors have cast Robert in a negative light is unfortunate and unfair," Richards told Science. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. Discoveries shed new light on the day the dinosaurs died. "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. I dont believe that Curtis himself went to another lab, he was ill for many years, Sacasa says. The findings are the work of paleontologist Robert DePalma, who has previously attracted controversy. 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. The excavated pointbar and event deposits show that the point bar had been exposed to the air for a considerable time, with evidence of habitation and filled burrows, before an abrupt, turbulent, high energy event filled these burrows and laid down the deposits. "Capturing the event in that much detail is pretty remarkable," concedes Blair Schoene, a geologist at Princeton University, but he says the site does not definitively prove that the impact event was the exclusive trigger of the mass extinction. Tanis is a site of paleontological interest in southwestern North Dakota, United States. 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. The latter paper was published by a team led by Robert DePalma, Durings former collaborator and a paleontologist now at the University of Manchester. [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. Tanis at the time was located on a river that may have drained into the shallow sea covering much of what is now the eastern and southern United States. 2023 American Association for the Advancement of Science. Part of the phenomenally fossil-rich Hell Creek Formation, Tanis sat on the shore of the ancient Western Interior Seaway some 65 million years ago. Tanis is the only known site in the Hell Creek Formation where such conditions were met, [so] the deposit attests to the exceptional nature of the [Event]. This directly applies to today. "Outcrops like [this] are the reasons many of us are drawn to geology," says David Kring, a geologist at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, who wasn't a member of the research team. 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. Some scientists cite the KT layer a 66-million-year-old section of earth present through most of the world, with a high iridium level as proof that this is so. [5] Secrecy about Tanis was maintained until disclosed by DePalma and co-author Jan Smit in two short summary papers presented in October 2017,[2][3] which remained the only public information before widespread media coverage of the full prepublication paper on 29 March 2019. 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. [1]:pg.11 Key findings were presented in two conference papers in October 2017. He has mined a fossil site in North Dakota secretly for years. Tanis is a significant site because it appears to record the events from the first minutes until a few hours after the impact of the giant Chicxulub asteroid in extreme detail. A newly discovered winged raptor may have belonged to a lineage of dinosaurs that grew large after . By Robert Sanders, Media relations | March 29, 2019. Robert A. DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History and a graduate student at the University of Kansas. Also, there is little evidence on the detailed effects of the event on Earth and its biosphere. This program was also aired as "Dinosaur Apocalypse: The Last Day" on PBS Nova starting 11 May 2022.[9][32]. December 10, 2021 Source: . Fossils from dinosaurs and other animals from thousands of years before the asteroid impact are very hard to come by, leading some to believe . . He says the study published in Scientific Reports began long before During became interested in the topic and was published after extended discussions over publishing a joint paper went nowhere. There is still much unknown about these prehistoric animals. But no one has found direct evidence of its lethal effects. We're seeing mass die-offs of animals and biomes that are being put through very stressful situations worldwide. At Tanis, unlike any other known Lagersttte site, it appears freak circumstances allowed for the preservation of exquisite, moment-by-moment details caused by the impact event. Petrified fish with glass spheres, called ejecta, were also at the site. DePalma did not respond to an email request for an interview. During and Ahlberg, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, question whether they exist. Asked where McKinney conducted his isotopic analyses, DePalma did not provide an answer. It feels like a case of the dog ate my homework, and I dont think the relatives of Curtis McKinney deserve this, During told Gizmodo. The site was systematically excavated by Robert DePalma over several years beginning in 2012, working in near total secrecy. In June 2021, paleontologist Melanie During submitted a manuscript to Nature that she suspected might create a minor scientific sensation. Robert DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History and a graduate student at the University of Kansas, works at a fossil site in North Dakota. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 378, Issue 6625. 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. [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. They seem to have left the raw data out of the manuscript deliberately, he says. A bad day for dinosaurs was the subject of an engaging hour-and-a-half for both paleontologists and NASA researchers. Study leader Robert DePalma conducts field research at the Tanis site. [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. Last modified on Fri 8 Apr 2022 11.20 EDT. Trapped in the debris is a jumbled mess of fossils, including freshwater sturgeon that apparently choked to death on glassy particles raining out of the sky from the fireball lofted by the impact. [15][1]:p.8. It is not even clear whether the massive waves were able to traverse the entire Interior Seaway. Her mentor there, paleontologist Jan Smit, introduced her to DePalma, at the time a graduate student at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Sackler has three children Rebecca, Marianna, and David with his now ex-wife, Beth Sackler. Another question about dinosaurs is what caused their extinction and there are many theories about that, too. No part of Durings paper had any bearing on the content of our study, DePalma says. 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. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. Robert DePalma (right) and Walter Alvarez (left) at the Tanis site in North Dakota. . [8] The site continues to be explored. Over the next 2 years, During says she made repeated attempts to discuss authorship with DePalma, but he declined to join her paper. Robert DePalma uncovers a preserved articulated body of a 65-million-year-old fish at Tanis. "Robert has been meticulous, borderline archaeological in his excavation approach," says Manning, who has been working at Tanis from the beginning. . Many theories exist about why the dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth. Bob was born in Newark, NJ on December 26, 1948 to the late James and Rose DePalma. "I've been asked, 'Why should we care about this? The site was originally discovered in 2008 by University of North Georgia Professor Steve Nicklas and field paleontologist Rob Sula. [1]:p.8 Seiche waves often occur shortly after significant earthquakes, even thousands of miles away, and can be sudden and violent. [1]:p.8193 The original paper describes the river in technical detail:[1]:Fig.1 and p.9181-8193. Robert DePalma is a paleontologist who holds the lease to the Tanis site and controls access to it.. How to Know If the Heat Is Making You Sick. These tables are not the same as raw data produced by the mass spectrometer named in the papers methods section, but DePalma noted the datas credibility had been verified by two outside researchers, paleontologist Neil Landman at the American Museum of Natural History and geochemist Kirk Cochran at Stony Brook University. DePalma's dinosaur study, published in Scientific Reports in December 2021, . 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). But two months before Durings paper would be published, a paper came out in Scientific Reports reaching essentially the same conclusion, based on an entirely separate data set, Science reported. It comprises two layers with sand and silt grading (coarse sands at the bottom, finer silt/clay particles at the top). Both papers studied 66-million-year-old paddlefish jawbones and sturgeon fin spines from Tanis. The deposit may also provide some of the strongest evidence yet that nonbird dinosaurs were still thriving on impact day. Paleontologist Jack Horner, who had to revise his theory that the T. rex was solely a scavenger based on a previous finding from DePalma, told the New Yorker he didn't remember who DePalma was . A researcher claims that Robert DePalma published a faulty study in order to get ahead of her own work on the Tanis fossil site. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. Top left, a shocked mineral from Tanis. It's at a North Dakota cattle ranch, some 2,000 miles (3,220 km) away. The 2023 Complete Python Certification Bootcamp Bundle, What Is Carbon Capture? The site, dubbed "Tanis," first underwent excavation in 2012, with DePalma and his team digging along a section known as the Hell Creek Formation (via Boredom Therapy). ^Note 2 If two earthquakes have moment magnitudes M1 and M2, then the energy released by the second earthquake is about 101.5 x (M2 M1) times as much at the first. Mr. Frithiof was able to broker an agreement between Paleo Prospectors and DePalma. The paleontologist Robert DePalma excavating a tangle of plant and animal fossils at the Tanis site in North Dakota. The same day, Ahlberg tweeted that he and During submitted a complaint of potential research misconduct against DePalma and Phillip Manning, one of the papers co-authors, to the University of Manchester. 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 last mass extinction event. At the site, called Tanis, the researchers say they have discovered the chaotic debris left when tsunamilike waves surged up a river valley. Dinosaurs have been dead for so long,'" DePalma told The Washington Post. He had already named the genus Dakotaraptor when others identified it as belonging to a prehistoric turtle. 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.
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