A secondary or even third-order correction to a sensational but old theory, which remains intact in its essence, would not ordinarily get much attention. But probably because this one has to do with dinosaurs and with threats to civilization, it gets a reasonable splash.

The background is that, in seeking to explain the big impact crater off Yucutan that is about 65 million years old, and the enhancedof iridium and other oddities in a layer of sediment worldwide of about that age and that implies a cosmochemical source (ie, rocks from space), a few researchers looked for scenarios that would have done the job. But now it looks like one variant on that hypothesis has hit a snag. In question is a hypothesis that the intruding rock arose from a specific collision, involving the asteroid Babtistina, in the asteroid belt. That puts the rock’s pre-impact history in the dark. No surprise there – it can’t be easy to figure such things out.

Thus reporters are left with a challenge. The news is interesting, but it is also that a hypothesis that most readers (even the science-attentive ones) have never heard of, is now in doubt. So that must be explained, but while being careful not to suggest that the bigger, death-by-space-impact hypothesis is now in play. If done well, the resulting story may wind up a sort of shaggy dog tale, full of explosion and death but that also elicits a puzzled “so?…what’s new here?”.

Stories:

• BBC – Leila Battison: Doubt over dino-killer culprit ; Text is clear. That hed is inevitable, and implies more than it delivers.
• Mail (UK) Emily Allen: Wrong suspect: Asteroid charged with wiping out the dinosaurs is NOT to blame, say scientists ; Same problem. It was a different asteroid. That leaves things about, to the level at which the public follows such things, unchanged.
• Sydney Morning Herald (Austra) Bridie Smith: Don’t blame asteroid: NASA ;
• Space.com – Origin of Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Is Still a Mystery ; This one tells is straight, and sensibly.
• ScienceNOW – Richard A. Kerr: Was the “Dinosaur Killer’ Unfairly Charged? NIcely done – ambiguous hed, explicit lede.

*UPDATE with other news, new-news, on life and death 65 million years ago :

• Phil. Inquirer – Tom Avril: Researchers trying to piece together a 65-million-year-old turtle ; Starts off as a somewhat routine visit to a lab where paleontologists are painstakingly assembling scattered fossil fragments into something that looks like something. Then wham, well after the story’s rhythm seems set, Avril slaps readers with what is exciting. The ancient turtle died, as he reminds readers, at an interesting time. 65 million years. That’s asteroid armageddon time. As one researcher tells him, “”This is about as good as it gets. A mass murder with evidence of asteroid ejects present.” Avril frankly here has buried the lede deep, probably deliberately. That’s risky, as many readers will yawn, will go on to other news. But this way it has the arc of a short story. There should, one must say, have been some vague foreshadowing, perhaps a hint of dread or awful carnage or something of that kind, just a hint. What we get is an opening suffused with the tedium of the paleontologist’s typical day. Then the lights come up. The background spectacle of K-T extinction Armageddon rivets the imagination. Act III:  a fade back to the dental picks and fragments on the lab table that by themselves look like nothing much at all. Readers who finish will have a rewarding, balanced view of science as it unfolds.

Grist for the Mill: NASA Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

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