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Science 23 November 2001:
Vol. 294. no. 5547, pp. 1668 - 1669
DOI: 10.1126/science.1066727
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Perspectives

GEOLOGY:
North American Devastation or Global Cataclysm?

Tim Flannery

Some 65 million years ago, a massive asteroid struck Yucatan at the southern margin of North America, ending the age of dinosaurs. This impact had devastating results for North American ecosystems. But was this devastation global or regional? As Flannery explains in his Perspective, records from the Southern Hemisphere have failed to show the "fern spikes" that signal catastrophic ecosystem disruption. But Vajda et al. report such a spike in records from New Zealand. Researchers may need to rethink of the impact of the asteroid strike.

The author is in the South Australian Museum, Adelaide, 5000 Australia. E-mail: flannery.tim{at}saugov.sa.gov.au

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Historical science, experimental science, and the scientific method: Comment and Reply: COMMENT.
K. T. Kilty (2002)
Geology 30, 951
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