The University of Kansas prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, ethnicity, religion, sex, national origin, age, ancestry, disability, status as a veteran, sexual orientation, marital status, parental status, gender identity, gender expression, and genetic information in the university's programs and activities. At the site, called Tanis, the researchers say they have discovered the chaotic debris left when tsunamilike waves surged up a river valley. Several more papers on Tanis are now in preparation, Manning says, and he expects they will describe the dinosaur fossils that are mentioned in The New Yorker article. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. Robert DEPALMA, Postgraduate Researcher | Cited by 253 | of The University of Manchester, Manchester | Read 18 publications | Contact Robert DEPALMA 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. This is not a case of he said, she said. This is also not a case of stealing someones ideas. 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). [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. Robert DePalma, fdd 12 oktober 1981, r en amerikansk paleontolog och kurator . When one paleontologist began excavating a dig site in the mountains of North Dakota, he soon discovered new dinosaur evidence that may change history. 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 . In turn, the fish remains revealed the season their lives endedergo, the precise timing of the devastating asteroid strike to the Yucatn Peninsula. 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. Special to The Forum. Your tax-deductible contribution plays a critical role in sustaining this effort. A researcher claims that Robert DePalma published a faulty study in order to get ahead of her own work on the Tanis fossil site. Episode . The deposit itself is about 1.3m thick, sharply overlaying the point bar, in a drape-like manner. Such waves are called seiches: The 2011 Tohoku earthquake near Japan triggered 1.5-meter-tall seiches in Norwegian fjords 8000 kilometers away. Notably, the powerful magnitude 9.0 9.1 Thoku earthquake in 2011, slower secondary waves traveled over 8,000km (5,000mi) in less than 30 minutes to cause seiches around 1.51.8m (4.95.9ft) high in Norway. Forum News Service, provided At his suggestion, she wrote a formal letter to Scientific Reports. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! There is still much unknown about these prehistoric animals. The Byte reports that the amber was found 2,000 miles away from the asteroid crater off the coast of Mexico believed to be . Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. Does fossil site record dino-killing impact? Last month, During published a comment on PubPeer alleging that the data in DePalmas paper may be fabricated. Tanis is part of the heavily studied Hell Creek Formation, a group of rocks spanning four states in North America renowned for many significant fossil discoveries from the Upper Cretaceous and lower Paleocene. We're seeing mass die-offs of animals and biomes that are being put through very stressful situations worldwide. In fact, there are probably dinosaur types that still remain unidentified, reported Smithsonian Magazine. For the archaeological site in Egypt, see, PNAS paper published in 2019: Prepublication and authorship, Last edited on 25 February 2023, at 16:30, CretaceousPaleogene ("K-Pg" or "K-T") extinction event, "A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota", Life after impact: A remarkable mammal burrow from the Chicxulub aftermath in the Hell Creek Formation, North Dakota, Tanis, a mixed marine-continental event deposit at the KPG Boundary in North Dakota caused by a seiche triggered by seismic waves of the Chicxulub Impact, "A Blast from the Past: Geochemical Identity of the Chicxulub Bolide and Immediate Effects of the Impact, recorded at Tanis, North Dakota", "Tanis: Fossil of dinosaur killed in asteroid strike found, scientists claim", "International Consensus Link Between Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction Is Rock Solid", "The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary", "National Natural Landmarks National Natural Landmarks (U.S. National Park Service)", "Fossil site is first ever to show deaths from mass extinction asteroid impact", "Paleontologist accused of faking data in dino-killing asteroid paper", "Stunning discovery offers glimpse of minutes following 'dinosaur-killer' Chicxulub impact", "Google News search 'Robert DePalma fossil' before 2019-03-28", "Incredible fossil find may be first victims of dino-killer asteroid", "Google News search 'Robert DePalma fossil' 27-03 to 2903 2019", Robert DePalma voice interview with Jason Spiess on the 'Crude Life Content Network' channel, "Robert DEPALMA | Postgraduate Researcher | the University of Manchester, Manchester | Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences", "Impaled turtle reveals new insight on the day the dinosaurs died", "A Turtle from the Tanis KPG Mass-Death Assemblage: Further Evidence for Circum-Riparian Disruption by a Massive Chicxulub Impact-Triggered Surge", "Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event", "The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring", A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota (2019), Supporting material and analysis for above paper (2019), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Tanis_(fossil_site)&oldid=1141547888, animals and plant material preserved in three-dimensional detail and at times upright, rather than pressed flat as usual, their remains thrown together by the massive wave movements, millions of "near perfect" primary (that is, not, large primitive feathers 3040cm long with 3.5mm quills, broken remains from almost all known Hell Creek dinosaur groups, fossils of hatchlings and intact eggs with embryo fossils, "the fluctuating, reticulated terminal-Cretaceous shoreline was not far away from the Tanis region", "The Event Deposit is a 1.3-m-thick bed that shows an overall grading upward from coarse sand to fine silt/clay and is associated with a deeply incised, large meandering river [and] sharply overlies the aggrading surface of a point bar", "the point bar exhibits 10.5 m of isochronous elevation change along its inclined surface and its width extends <50 m perpendicular to (ancient) flow direction. But the fossils also held clues to the season of the catastrophe, During found. The site was systematically excavated by Robert DePalma over several years beginning in 2012, working in near total secrecy. This dinosaur, a giant reptilian, lived during the Early Cretaceous period in oceans. Top left, a shocked mineral from Tanis. The email, which came after Science started to inquire about the case, says their concerns remain under investigation. [1]:figure S29 pg.53 In 2022, a partial mummified Thescelosaurus was unearthed here with its skin still intact.[7]. Douglas Preston's writing about the discovery lauds it as one of the . 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 James DePalma, 71, a longtime Florida resident passed away Tuesday, May 12, 2020 at his residence in Fort Myers, FL. Was it a fierce volcanic eruption that toppled these creatures? 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 . After trying to discuss the matter with editors at Scientific Reports for nearly a year, During recently decided to make her suspicions public. Point bars are common in mature or meandering streams. An imagined dinosaur scene just after the asteroid strike that caused a mass extinction, from . No fossil beds were yet known that could clearly show the details that might resolve these questions. The site, after all, does not conclusively prove that the asteroid's impact actually caused the dinosaurs' demise, reported Science. In the caravan are microscopes . His reputation suffered when, in 2015, he and his colleagues described a new genus of dinosaur named Dakotaraptor, found in a site close to Tanis. . But relatively little fossil evidence is available from times nearer the crucial event, a difficulty known as the "Three metre problem". 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. Asked where McKinney conducted his isotopic analyses, DePalma did not provide an answer. Gizmodo covered the research at the time. Robert DePalma made headlines again in 2021 with the discovery of a leg from a Thescelosaurus dinosaur at Tanis, reported The Washington Post. By looking through this window into the past, we can apply these lessons to today. 01/05/2021. The mud and sand are dotted with glassy spherulesmany caught in the gills of the fishisotopically dated to 65.8 million years ago. If we've learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it's that we cannot wait for a crisis to respond. Ahlberg shared her concerns. His advisor suggested seeking a similar site, closer to the K-Pg boundary layer. 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 . The three-metre problem encompasses that . Her mentor there, paleontologist Jan Smit, introduced her to DePalma, at the time a graduate student at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. paper] may be fabricated, created to fit an already known conclusion. (She also posted the statement on the OSF Preprints server today.). These dimensions are in the upper size range for point bars in the Hell Creek Formation and compare favorably with modern rivers with large channels that are tens to hundreds of meters wide", "[The Event flood deposits are] indicative of a westward or inland flow direction that is opposite of the natural (ancient) current of the Tanis River", "[The] Event Deposit is restricted to (an ancient) river valley and is conspicuously absent from the adjacent floodplains. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of . The co-authors included Walter Alvarez and Jan Smit, both renowned experts on the K-Pg impact and extinction. Could it be a comet, asteroid, or meteor that crashed into the planet, and the reverberations ended the reign of the dinosaurs? 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. After his team learned about Durings plan to submit a paper, DePalma says, one of his colleagues strongly advised During that the paper must at minimum acknowledge the teams earlier work and include DePalmas name as a co-author. ", Since Tanis became an excavation site, several other fossils were found, including a pterosaur embryo. Fragile remains spanning the layers of debris show that the site was laid down in a single event over a short timespan. [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. "Those few meters of rock record the wrath of the Chicxulub impact and the devastation it caused." The CretaceousPaleogene ("K-Pg" or "K-T") extinction event around 66 million years ago wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. Some scientists were not happy with this proposal. ", "Tanis exhibits a depositional scenario that was unusual in being highly conducive to exceptional (largely three dimensional) preservation of many articulated carcasses (Konservat-Lagersttte). There is considerable detail for times greater than hundreds of thousands of years either side of the event, and for certain kinds of change on either side of the K-Pg boundary layer. It reads: Editors Note: Readers are alerted that the reliability of data presented in this manuscript is currently in question. He has mined a fossil site in North Dakota secretly for . All of these factors seemed strange and confused the paleontologists. 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. Three papers were published in 2021. Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. Kansas University, via Agence France-Presse Getty Images These include many rare and unique finds, which allow unprecedented examination of the direct effects of the impact on plants and animals alive at the time of the large impact some 3,000km (1,900mi) distant. Its not clear where McKinney conducted these analyses, and raw data was not included in the published paper. If Tanis is all it is claimed to be, that debateand many others about this momentous day in Earth's historymay be over. 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. 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. Such a conclusion might provide the best evidence yet that at least some dinosaurs were alive to witness the asteroid impact. In my view, it was an intentional omission which leads me to question the credibility of data. Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh, says, There is a simple way for the DePalma team to address these concerns, and that is to publish the raw data output from their stable isotope analyses.. Its author, Douglas Preston, who learned of the find from DePalma in 2013, writes that DePalma's team found dinosaur bones caught up in the 1.3-meter-thick deposit, some so high in the sequence that DePalma suspects the carcasses were floating in the roiling water. "I just hope this hasn't been oversensationalized.". The study of these creatures is limited to the fossils they left behind and those provide an incomplete picture. The findings each preclude correlation with either the Cantapeta or Breien, This page was last edited on 25 February 2023, at 16:30. However, two independent scientists who reviewed the data behind the paper shortly after its publication say they were satisfied with its authenticity and have no reason to distrust it. It is not even clear whether the massive waves were able to traverse the entire Interior Seaway. though Robert DePalma's love of the dead and buried was anything but . During and Ahlberg, a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, question whether they exist. 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.