Dinosaurs lived and roamed the earth for hundreds of millions of years. But they disappeared from geological rock record about 66 million years ago. What happened to them? Don Peck, science educator and geologist, and long time colleague and friend has some answers to that question. He’s organized his ideas in this guest post, entitled The Day the Dinosaurs Died. It’s my pleasure to share Don’s ideas about one of the most momentous days in the geological history of the earth.
Donald Peck was the Director of the Center for Elementary Science, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Madison, NJ. He was a district science supervisor in New Jersey for 23 years and is a Houghton Mifflin Science DiscoveryWorks author. Don and I are co-authors of Holt Science, a K-6 elementary science series, which we wrote in the late 1970s & 1980s. He has an active website at mindat.org. He recently published Mineral Identification: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Mineralogist by the Mineralogical Record.
Since 2012, Don has made about 15 multi-media science related lectures at his Greenfields’ apartment complex in Geneva, Illinois.
The presentation that is featured in this post was given to residents of Greenfields on July 1, 2020. Because of the coronavirus, only 10 persons were present in the presentation room, but it was video taped and fed into the private channel at Greenfields. It’s also available on YouTube.
I was very excited when Don sent PowerPoint slides of his presentation. I knew the presentation was going to be very good. I wasn’t disappointed when I received the two part YouTube videos of his talk.
Dinosaurs are, of course, a topic of great interest to school-aged children. But, it’s also been my experience that we adults want to know how they disappeared from the rock record. Don’s presentation will help you find out.
Don wrote this on his mindat.org site:
I finished my active career in administration and teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson University in New Jersey. The administration part was in science education. The teaching, in geology. After I retired I turned some short articles I had written on mineral ID (for a club newsletter) into a book, Mineral Identification: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Mineralogist. Wendell Wilson and the Mineralogical Record kindly published it. It is now in its 2nd edition.
In 2015 I took my last field collecting trip with a couple of friends. We drove up to the Keeweenaw Peninsula and dug in the dump piles of several mines. I learned some things about myself on that trip. At 87 I could still swing a hammer, I should not climb on rock piles, and I could no longer tie my own shoes.
In 2012, I moved into an apartment in Geneva, Illinois. Regretfully, it was necessary to sell my macro collection of about 1000 pieces, and most of my books (that hurt the most). My micro collection came with me. Today, my micros number about 1000 and my “mine” is a closet in which there is enough unprocessed rough to keep me busy to the end of my days. Oh, and I still enjoy writing.
Peck, D. (2018). Mineral Identification: A Practical Guide for the Amateur Mineralogist. Retrieved July 04, 2020, from https://mineralogicalrecord.com/bookdetail.asp?id=48
The Day the Dinosaurs Died
The dinosaurs didn’t die in one day. According to Don Peck, most of them surely died on the day a large asteroid slammed into the earth at 45,000 miles per hour. Unimaginable earthquakes split and shook the ground like never before. Tsunami’s reached land thousands of miles from the point of impact. Plants, animals and other living organisms were pelted with hog gases and fragments. Fires worse than we can imagine lit up the earth. A layer of sulfur dioxide lingered above the earth Interrupting the path of solar energy causing a cooling disruption of the earth’s weather. It wasn’t a good time for life on the earth.
Now get ready to experience the images that form the outline of Don’s presentation which you can watch in a two-part video production below the slides.
PowerPoint Slides
Slides Accompanying Don Peck’s Presentation
Video Presentation
Don Peck’s presentation was video taped at Greenfields Geneva, Illinois, and is presented here in two parts.
Image at the top of the post by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay
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