Images: Top right, Robert DePalma and Peter Larson conduct field research in Tanis. A researcher claims that Robert DePalma published a faulty study in order to get ahead of her own work on the Tanis fossil site. That same year, encouraged by a Dutch award for the thesis, she began to prepare a journal article. [8] The site continues to be explored. "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. Taylor Mickal/NASA. Th Science asked other co-authors on the paper, including Manning, for comment, but none responded. The site was systematically excavated by Robert DePalma over several years beginning in 2012, working in near total secrecy. Top left, a shocked mineral from Tanis. It is not even clear whether the massive waves were able to traverse the entire Interior Seaway. 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. [5] Co-author Professor Phillip Manning, a specialist in fossil soft tissues,[19] described DePalma's working techniques at Tanis as "meticulous" and "borderline archaeological in his excavation approach". "I'm suspicious of the findings. [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]. The deathbed created within an hour of the impact has been excavated at an unprecedented fossil site in North Dakota. Others defend DePalma, like his co-author, Mark Richards, a geophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley. That "disconnect" bothers Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. Bde hans far och hans farfars bror var kirurger i Florida. The claim is the Tanis creatures were killed and entombed on the actual day a giant asteroid struck Earth. 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. The 1960 Valdivia Chile earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded, estimated at magnitude 9.4 to 9.6. The story of the discoveries is revealed in a new documentary called "Dinosaur Apocalypse," which features naturalist Sir David Attenborough and paleontologist Robert DePalma and airs . "After a while, we decided it wasn't a good route to go down," he says. This directly applies to today. Victoria Wicks: DePalma's name is listed first on the research article published in April last year, and he has been the primary spokesman on the story . In December 2021, a team of paleontologists published data . 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. The event included waves with at least 10 meters run-up height (the vertical distance a wave travels after it reaches land). DePalma, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Manchester, vehemently denies any wrongdoing. 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. 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. Could NASA's Electric Airplane Make Aviation More Sustainable? Eiler agrees. [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. Additional fossils, including this beautifully preserved fish tail, have been found at the Tanis site in North Dakota. Another question about dinosaurs is what caused their extinction and there are many theories about that, too. Some scientists were not happy with this proposal. Last month, During published a comment on PubPeer alleging that the data in DePalmas paper may be fabricated. As a part of the settlement, the Sacklers will have immunity against any and all future civil litigation. Top editors give you the stories you want delivered right to your inbox each weekday. 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. [1]:p.8192 The river flowed Eastward (other than impact driven waves),[1]:p.8192 with inland being to the West; Tanis itself was therefore in an ancient river valley close to the Westward shore of the Interior Seaway. DePalma says his team also invited Durings team to join DePalmas ongoing study. Subscribe to News from Science for full access to breaking news and analysis on research and science policy. ", "Tanis exhibits a depositional scenario that was unusual in being highly conducive to exceptional (largely three dimensional) preservation of many articulated carcasses (Konservat-Lagersttte). In December 2021, a team of paleontologists published data suggesting that the asteroid impact that ended the reign of dinosaurs could be pinned down to a seasonspringtime, 66 million years agothanks to an analysis of fossilized fish remains at a famous site in North Dakota. 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. Bottom left, micro-CT image showing cutaway of clay-altered ejecta spherule with internal core of unaltered impact glass. DePalma's team argues that as seismic waves from the distant impact reached Tanis minutes later, the shaking generated 10-meter waves that surged from the sea up the river valley, dumping sediment and both marine and freshwater organisms there. If they can provide the raw data, its just a sloppy paper. A researcher claims that Robert DePalma published a faulty study in order to get ahead of her own work on the Tanis fossil site. She also removed DePalma as an author from her own manuscript, then under review at Nature. 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. Asked where McKinney conducted his isotopic analyses, DePalma did not provide an answer. 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. It comprises two layers with sand and silt grading (coarse sands at the bottom, finer silt/clay particles at the top). 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.His advisor suggested seeking a similar site, closer to the K-Pg boundary layer. Such a conclusion might provide the best evidence yet that at least some dinosaurs were alive to witness the asteroid impact. 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. 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. 2 / 4: Robert A. DePalma, a paleontologist at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History and a graduate student at the University of Kansas. 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. Tanis is a significant site because it appears to record the events from the first minutes until . A Triceratops or other ceratopsian ilium (hip bone) was found at the high water mark, in circumstances hinting that the dinosaur might speculatively have been a floating carcass and possibly alive at or just before impact,[5] but the paper describing such remains was still in progress as of 2019[6] the initial papers only include a photograph and its location within Tanis. Such waves are called seiches: The 2011 Tohoku earthquake near Japan triggered 1.5-meter-tall seiches in Norwegian fjords 8000 kilometers away. 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. Was it a fierce volcanic eruption that toppled these creatures? Robert DePalma reveals the Tanis site discoveries he couldn't talk about in Part One. 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. [5] The fish were not bottom feeders. Astonishment, skepticism greet fossils claimed to record dinosaur-killing asteroid impact. Other papers describing the site and its fossils are in progress. [1]:p.8, Although Tanis and Chicxulub were connected by the remaining Interior Seaway, the massive water waves from the impact area were probably not responsible for the deposits at Tanis. This whole site is the KT boundary We have the whole KT event preserved in these sediments. Robert DePalma made headlines again in 2021 with the discovery of a leg from a Thescelosaurus dinosaur at Tanis, reported The Washington Post. "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. The paper cleared peer review at PNAS within about 4 months. 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. "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. [31][18], A BBC documentary on Tanis, titled Dinosaurs: The Final Day, with Sir David Attenborough, was broadcast on 15 April 2022. By Dave Kindy. [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. The Dakotaraptor fossil, next to a paleontologist for scale. In December 2021, a team of paleontologists published data suggesting that the asteroid impact that ended the reign of dinosaurs could be pinned down to a season springtime, 66 million years agothanks to an analysis of fossilized fish remains at a famous site in North . [5] Analysis of early samples showed that the microtektites at Tanis were almost identical to those found at the Mexican impact site, and were likely to be primary deposits (directly from the impact) and not reworked (moved from their original location by later geological processes).[1]. The site was originally discovered in 2008 by University of North Georgia Professor Steve Nicklas and field paleontologist Rob Sula. Searching in the hills of North Dakota, palaeontologist Robert DePalma makes an incredible . The email, which came after Science started to inquire about the case, says their concerns remain under investigation. He reportedly helps fund his fieldwork by selling replicas of his finds to private collectors. With the exception of some ectothermic species such as the ancestors of the modern leatherback sea turtle and crocodiles, no tetrapods weighing more than 25kg (55lb) survived. Others later pointed out that the reconstructed skeleton includes a bone that really belonged to a turtle; DePalma and his colleagues issued a correction. 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. 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. though Robert DePalma's love of the dead and buried was anything but . They did a few years of digging, uncovering beautiful, fragile sh . The response doesnt satisfy During and Ahlberg, who want the paper retracted. Robert DePalma r son till tandkirurgen Robert De Plama Sr i Delray Beach. Such Konservat-Lagersttten are rare because they require special depositional circumstances. As the drama unfolded, paleontologist Robert DePalma got a lot of personal and professional criticisms, including suggestions that he was showboating and driving up controversy to get additional . Robert DePalma is a vertebrate paleontologist, based out of Florida Atlantic University (FAU), whose focus on terrestrial life of the late Cretaceous, the Chicxulub asteroid impact, and the evolution of theropod dinosaurs, was sparked by a passionate fascination with the past. Cochran says the format of the isotopic data does not appear unusual. Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.. The lead author of that paper, and of the 2021 Scientific Reports paper, is Robert DePalma, a paleontologist who was the central character in a lengthy story published by The New Yorker a day . 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. He has mined a fossil site in North Dakota secretly for . Petrified fish with glass spheres, called ejecta, were also at the site. "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. Isaac Schultz. It features what appear to be scanned printouts of manually typed tables containing the isotopic data from the fish fossils. The CretaceousPaleogene ("K-Pg" or "K-T") extinction event around 66 million years ago wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs and many other species. 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. In December 2021, DePalma and his colleagues published an important paper . But others question DePalma's interpretations. Her mentor there, paleontologist Jan Smit, introduced her to DePalma, at the time a graduate student at the University of Kansas, Lawrence. 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. During the long process of discussing these options they decided to submit their paper, he says. [1]:pg.11 Key findings were presented in two conference papers in October 2017. The day 66 million years ago when the reign of the dinosaurs ended and the rise of . .mw-parser-output .citation{word-wrap:break-word}.mw-parser-output .citation:target{background-color:rgba(0,127,255,0.133)}^Note 1 This section is drawn from the original 2019 paper[1] and its supplementary materials,[4] which describe the site in detail. Underneath a freshwater paddlefish skeleton, a mosasaur tooth appeared. Dont yet have access? Retaliation is also prohibited by university policy. "He could have stumbled on something amazing, but he has a reputation for making a lot out of a little.". At his suggestion, she wrote a formal letter to Scientific Reports. The mud and sand are dotted with glassy spherulesmany caught in the gills of the fishisotopically dated to 65.8 million years ago. When I saw [microtektites in their own impact craters], I knew this wasnt just any flood deposit. [1]:Fig.1 and p.9181-8192 Although other flooding is evidenced in Hells Creek, the Tanis deposit does not appear to relate to any other Marine transgression (inland shoreline movement) known to have taken place. Both papers made their conclusions based on analysis of fish remains at the Tanis fossil site in North Dakota. The seiche waves exposed and covered the site twice, as millions of tiny microtektite droplets and debris from the impact were arriving on ballistic trajectories from their source in what is now the Yucatn Peninsula. The exceptional nature of the findings and conclusions have led some scientists to await further scrutiny by the scientific community before agreeing that the discoveries at Tanis have been correctly understood. The fish contain isotope records and evidence of how the animals growth corresponded to the season (tree rings do the same thing). Robert DePalma (right) and Walter Alvarez (left) at the Tanis site in North Dakota. He is survived by his loving wife,. 01/05/2021. No part of Durings paper had any bearing on the content of our study, DePalma says. 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. [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 findings are the work of paleontologist Robert DePalma, who has previously attracted controversy. Get more great content like this delivered right to you! "I just hope this hasn't been oversensationalized.". 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. More: Science Publisher Retracts 44 Papers for Being Utter Nonsense, We may earn a commission from links on this page. 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]. It could be just one factor in a series of environmental events that led to their extinction. Published May 11, 2022 6:09PM (EDT) By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer. 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. Every summer, for the past eight years, paleontologist Robert de Palma and a caravan of colleagues drive 2,257 miles from Boca Raton to the sleepy North Dakota town of Bowman. 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. JPS.C.2021.0002: The Paleontology, Geology and Taphonomy of the Tooth Draw Deposit; Hell Creek Formation (Maastrictian), Butte County, South Dakota. The x-rays revealed tiny bits of glass called spherulesremnants of the shower of molten rock that would have been thrown from the impact site and rained down around the world. September 20, 2021. What we do know is that during the Jurassic period, great global upheaval occurred with increases in temperature, surging sea levels, and less humidity. View Obituary & Service Information [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. Robert DePalma. Plus, tektites, pieces of natural glass formed by a meteor's impact, were scattered amid the soil. This explanation was proposed long before DePalma's discovery. I dont believe that Curtis himself went to another lab, he was ill for many years, Sacasa says. 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.
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