I'll stop here, but this is a bit of an avocation of mine, and this is unthinkably amazing. To think something like this existed... I almost think there has to be catch, because it's too good to be true.
"He planned to remove the entire burrow intact, in a block, and run it through a CT scanner back home, to see what it contained. “Any Cretaceous mammal burrow is incredibly rare,” he said. “But this one is impossible—it’s dug right through the KT boundary.” Perhaps, he said, the mammal survived the impact and the flood, burrowed into the mud to escape the freezing darkness, then died. “It may have been born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleocene,” he said. “And to think—sixty-six million years later, a stinky monkey is digging it up, trying to figure out what happened.” He added, “If it’s a new species, I’ll name it after you.”"
and
"The block told the story of the impact in microcosm. “It was a very bad day,” DePalma said. “Look at these two fish.” He showed me where the sturgeon’s scutes—the sharp, bony plates on its back—had been forced into the body of the paddlefish. One fish was impaled on the other. The mouth of the paddlefish was agape, and jammed into its gill rakers were microtektites—sucked in by the fish as it tried to breathe. DePalma said, “This fish was likely alive for some time after being caught in the wave, long enough to gasp frenzied mouthfuls of water in a vain attempt to survive.”"
That's the mind blowing thing about fossils. The chances of one forming are one in millions... but there have been so many living organisms on Earth that finding them turns out to be pretty trivial. One of my most mind blowing memories as a child involves tripping on a rock in my grandparents' yard, pulling it out, and revealing on its surface the perfect carbon imprint of some fern-like looking plant.
And then we have the one in a million chance of finding the one in a million site, which leads to what the article describes. Pretty awesome.
I see a lot of expression of scepticism, echo-chamber style, but not much ‘reason’.
The central attack seems to be a straw-man; that it’s not a dinosaur graveyard, something that was never claimed in the article at all. It’s like they read the title, and jumped on Twitter without reading the whole article.
That the first paper doesn't talk about dinosaurs is reason for skepticism? He didn't tell us everything in the first paper, therefore it's probably bullshit?
I didn't say that. But that link I provided was a working paleontologist, so I figured his skepticism was worth noting. I couldn't tell you if it's bullshit or not, as a non-expert in the field.
"He planned to remove the entire burrow intact, in a block, and run it through a CT scanner back home, to see what it contained. “Any Cretaceous mammal burrow is incredibly rare,” he said. “But this one is impossible—it’s dug right through the KT boundary.” Perhaps, he said, the mammal survived the impact and the flood, burrowed into the mud to escape the freezing darkness, then died. “It may have been born in the Cretaceous and died in the Paleocene,” he said. “And to think—sixty-six million years later, a stinky monkey is digging it up, trying to figure out what happened.” He added, “If it’s a new species, I’ll name it after you.”"
and
"The block told the story of the impact in microcosm. “It was a very bad day,” DePalma said. “Look at these two fish.” He showed me where the sturgeon’s scutes—the sharp, bony plates on its back—had been forced into the body of the paddlefish. One fish was impaled on the other. The mouth of the paddlefish was agape, and jammed into its gill rakers were microtektites—sucked in by the fish as it tried to breathe. DePalma said, “This fish was likely alive for some time after being caught in the wave, long enough to gasp frenzied mouthfuls of water in a vain attempt to survive.”"