Rock Solid Evidence for the Meteor Theory

The current belief on the dinosaurs is that a large meteor impacted the Earth about 66 million years ago, unleashing a destructive force with the resulting fallout also affecting the climate and bringing about their extinction.

Point of impact: The Chicxulub crater at the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary, formerly called Cretaceous–Tertiary or K–T boundary) contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal. Iridium is extremely rare in the Earth's crust because it is very dense and has the affinity for iron that characterizes the siderophile elements (see Goldschmidt classification), and therefore most of it sank into the Earth's core while the earth was still molten. The Alvarez team suggested that an asteroid struck the earth at the time of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary.
http://web.archive.org/web/20201108005220/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis

When first proposed by the Alvarez's it was not immediately accepted by the majority of Evolutionists and even met some derision. But over the intervening years Evolutionists have warmed to the hypothesis and currently the vast majority have accepted it, swinging away from volcanism:

In the March 5, 2010 edition of the journal Science, an international panel of 41 experts in geology, paleontology and other related fields, after an exhaustive review of the data, declared an end to a 30 year controversy over what triggered the extinction of the dinosaurs – an asteroid or volcanoes. The panel ruled in favor of the asteroid, a theory first put forth in 1980 by one of Berkeley Lab’s greatest scientists, the late Nobel laureate Luis Alvarez, and his son Walter, a geologist with UC Berkeley.

“We conclude that the Chicxulub impact was the ultimate cause for the mass extinctions of the dinosaurs,” Schulte told the media.
https://newscenter.lbl.gov/2010/03/09/alvarez-theory-on-dinosaur/

Since the impact hypothesis for the demise of the dinosaurs was first proposed more than 30 years ago, many scientists have come to believe the meteor caused the mass extinction and wiped out the dinosaurs
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110712211016.htm

Indeed, an only moderate climate change (~2°C warming) during the last 400 thousand years of the Cretaceous has been interpreted to result from Deccan flood basalt volcanism ...
The correlation between impact-derived ejecta and paleontologically defined extinctions at multiple locations around the globe leads us to conclude that the Chicxulub impact triggered the mass extinction that marks the boundary between the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras ~65.5 million years ago.
Schulte, P.; et al. (5 March 2010). "The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary" (PDF). Science. 327 (5970): 1214–1218.
http://doc.rero.ch/record/210367/files/PAL_E4389.pdf

The theory is now widely accepted by the scientific community.
http://web.archive.org/web/20211228051109/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

And the evidence from the rocks does lend some support for this strange theory:

In 1980, a team of researchers led by Nobel prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez, his son, geologist Walter Alvarez, and chemists Frank Asaro and Helen Vaughn Michel discovered that sedimentary layers found all over the world at the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (K–Pg boundary, formerly called Cretaceous–Tertiary or K–T boundary) contain a concentration of iridium hundreds of times greater than normal.
http://web.archive.org/web/20201108005220/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis

as soon as DePalma started digging he noticed grayish-white specks in the layers which looked like grains of sand but which, under a hand lens, proved to be tiny spheres and elongated droplets. "I think, Holy sh*t, these look like microtektites!' DePalma recalled. Microtektites are the blobs of glass that form when molten rock is blasted into the air by an asteroid impact and falls back to Earth in a solidifying drizzle. The site appeared to contain microtektites by the million.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

The evidence for the Alvarez impact hypothesis is supported by chondritic meteorites and asteroids which contain a much higher iridium concentration than the Earth's crust. The isotopic ratio of iridium in meteorites is similar to that of the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer but significantly different from the ratio in the Earth's crust. Chromium isotopic anomalies found in Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary sediments are similar to that of an asteroid or a comet composed of carbonaceous chondrites. Shocked quartz granules, glass spherules and tektites, indicative of an impact event, are common in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary, especially in deposits from around the Caribbean. All of these constituents are embedded in a layer of clay, which the Alvarez team interpreted as the debris spread all over the world by the impact.
http://web.archive.org/web/20201108005220/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvarez_hypothesis

Even the fossils allude to a possible meteor impact:

A more recent discovery is believed to demonstrate evidence of the scope of the destruction from the impact. In a March 2019 article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of twelve scientists revealed the contents of the Tanis fossil site discovered near Bowman, North Dakota that appeared to show the destruction of an ancient lake and its inhabitants at the time of the Chicxulub impact. In the paper, the group claims that the geology of the site is strewn with fossilized trees and remains of fish and other animals. The lead researcher, Robert A. DePalma of the University of Kansas, was quoted in the New York Times as stating that "you would be blind to miss the carcasses sticking out... It is impossible to miss when you see the outcrop." Evidence correlating this find to the Chicxulub impact included tektites bearing "the unique chemical signature of other tektites associated with the Chicxulub event" found in the gills of fish fossils and embedded in amber, an iridium-rich top layer that is considered another signature of the event, and an atypical lack of scavenging of the dead fish and animals that suggested few other species survived the event to feed off the mass death.
http://web.archive.org/web/20211228051109/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

a block of stone three feet long by eighteen inches wide lay on a table under bright lights and a large magnifying lens. The block, DePalma said, contained a sturgeon and a paddlefish, along with dozens of smaller fossils and a single small, perfect crater with a tektite in it. The lower parts of the block consisted of debris, fragments of bone, and loose tektites that had been dislodged and caught up in the turbulence. 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."
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

All these evidences from the earth tell us that it is an undisputable fact that 66 million years ago a massive meteor slammed into the planet and brought about the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

So for those who are saying you believe a meteor did this? It must have left a pretty large crater. Has any such crater been found that links to the Extinction Event at 66 Ma? The answer is yes! Such a crater has been found!

Approximate location of the Chicxulub impact crater, in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, near the town of Chicxulub.

Approximate location of the Chicxulub impact crater, in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, near the town of Chicxulub.

Approximate location of the Chicxulub impact crater, in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, near the town of Chicxulub.

The Chicxulub crater (IPA: [tʃikʃuˈlub]) is an impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is offshore near the communities of Chicxulub Puerto and Chicxulub Pueblo, after which the crater is named. It was formed when a large asteroid, about 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) in diameter, struck the Earth. The date of the impact coincides precisely with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (commonly known as the "K–Pg boundary"), slightly more than 66 million years ago, and a widely accepted theory is that worldwide climate disruption from the event was the cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction in which 75% of plant and animal species on Earth became extinct, including all non-avian dinosaurs.

The crater is estimated to be 150 kilometers (93 miles) in diameter and 20 kilometers (12 miles) in depth, well into the continental crust of the region of about 10–30 kilometers (6.2–18.6 miles) in depth.

The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán Peninsula during the late 1970s. Penfield was initially unable to obtain evidence that the geological feature was a crater and gave up his search. Later, through contact with Alan R. Hildebrand in 1990, Penfield obtained samples that suggested it was an impact feature. Evidence for the impact origin of the crater includes shocked quartz, a gravity anomaly, and tektites in surrounding areas.
http://web.archive.org/web/20220105113846/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

NASA imaging revealing part of the diameter ring of the crater.

NASA imaging revealing part of the diameter ring of the crater.

NASA imaging revealing part of the diameter ring of the crater.

An undisputable fact

So it is abundantly clear that the evidence for the meteor impact is rock solid. Evidence from the rocks is continually being found to support it. Evidence from the fossils has also been found to support the meteor impact scenario. And the smoking gun has also been found. The actual crater of impact has been found that fits the scenario. The Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.

All these evidences from the earth tell us that it is an undisputable fact that 66 million years ago a massive meteor slammed into the planet travelling at approximately 100,000 km/h, unleashing a destructive force the equivalent of up to 921 billion Hiroshima A-Bombs. And scientists have held a few conferences over the last few years where they have conclusively determined that it was indeed this event that took out the dinosaurs, and not something else like volcanic activity.

Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub impact area.

Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub impact area.

Gravity anomaly map of the Chicxulub impact area.

Within two minutes of slamming into Earth, the asteroid, which was at least six miles wide, had gouged a crater about eighteen miles deep and lofted twenty-five trillion metric tons of debris into the atmosphere. Picture the splash of a pebble falling into pond water, but on a planetary scale. When Earth's crust rebounded, a peak higher than Mt. Everest briefly rose up. The energy released was more than that of a billion Hiroshima bombs, ...
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

A comet or an asteroid—we aren't sure which—collided with the Earth, hitting what is now the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico. It was about six miles (ten kilometers) wide, or about the size of Mount Everest. It was probably moving at a speed of around 67,000 miles per hour (108,000 kilometers per hour), more than a hundred times faster than a jet airliner. When it slammed into our planet, it hit with the force of over 100 trillion tons of TNT, somewhere in the vicinity of a billion nuclear bombs' worth of energy. It plowed some twenty-five miles (forty kilometers) through the crust and into the mantle, leaving a crater that was over 100 miles (160 kilometers) wide. p.315.
The RISE and FALL of the DINOSAURS
A New History of Their Lost World, STEVE BRUSATTE. 2018.

Shaded relief radar topography showing a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater.

Shaded relief radar topography showing a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater.

Shaded relief radar topography showing a subtle, but unmistakable, indication of the Chicxulub impact crater.

This comet is 10 kilometres in diameter, taller than Mt Everest or larger than the Martian moon Deimos. This harbinger of destruction is travelling at a speed of more than 100000 kilometres per hour and its energy of motion has the destructive force of 100 million hydrogen bombs. p.163.
Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, John Pickrell, 2014.

The rock was an asteroid, essentially a small planet or a large meteorite. It measured up to 7 kilometres (4 miles) across, the size of Manhattan, and as it drove into the Earth's crust, just off the coast of the Yucatan peninsula in modern Mexico, it blasted out a deep hole and caused shattering of the crust to an even greater depth, and over a much wider radius, than the crater itself (see pl. xix).
The impact had a kinetic energy of more than 10 billion megatonnes. This is a thousand times the amount of energy contained in all the world's nuclear weapons arsenals. p.254.
The Dinosaurs Rediscovered, MICHAEL J. BENTON, 2019.

The Chicxulub impactor had an estimated diameter of 11-81 kilometers (6.8-50.3 mi), and delivered an estimated energy of 21-921 billion Hiroshima A-bombs (between 1.3x10²⁴ and 5.8x10²⁵ joules, or 1.3-58 yottajoules). For comparison, this is ~100 million times the energy released by the Tsar Bomba, a thermonuclear device ("H-bomb") that remains the most powerful human-made explosive ever detonated, which released 210 petajoules (2.1x10¹⁷ joules, or 50 megatons TNT).
http://web.archive.org/web/20211228051109/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater
Note: see Ref 1.

One small problem

There is one small problem. Because of the destructive power associated with the meteor there is a small number of evolutionists who have refused to get on the bandwagon for this theory.

Within two minutes of slamming into Earth, the asteroid, which was at least six miles wide, had gouged a crater about eighteen miles deep and lofted twenty-five trillion metric tons of debris into the atmosphere. Picture the splash of a pebble falling into pond water, but on a planetary scale. When Earth's crust rebounded, a peak higher than Mt. Everest briefly rose up. The energy released was more than that of a billion Hiroshima bombs, ...

Earth itself became toxic. When the asteroid struck, it vaporized layers of limestone, releasing into the atmosphere a trillion tons of carbon dioxide, ten billion tons of methane, and a billion tons of carbon monoxide; all three are powerful greenhouse gases. The impact also vaporized anhydrite rock, which blasted ten trillion tons of sulfur compounds aloft. The sulfur combined with water to form sulfuric acid, which then fell as an acid rain that may have been potent enough to strip the leaves from any surviving plants and to leach the nutrients from the soil.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/04/08/the-day-the-dinosaurs-died

Then acid rain, formed from the nitrous oxide and sulfates clogging the atmosphere, began to hammer down on the surface, killing plants and animals and even dissolving rocks. This rain would have been as corrosive as battery acid and its most devastating effect would have been to destroy the shells of small marine organisms. p.165.
Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, John Pickrell, 2014.

A new study led by Yale University confirms a long-held theory about the last great mass extinction event in history and how it affected Earth’s oceans.

The researchers say it is the first direct evidence that the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago coincided with a sharp drop in the pH levels of the oceans — which indicates a rise in ocean acidity.

“The ocean acidification we observe could easily have been the trigger for mass extinction in the marine realm,” said senior author Pincelli Hull, assistant professor of geology and geophysics at Yale.
https://news.yale.edu/2019/10/21/mystery-solved-ocean-acidity-last-mass-extinction
See Ref 2.

A study of boron isotopes in the tests of foraminifera that lived deep in the oceans and near their surface just after the K-Pg boundary event has revealed that ocean water suddenly became more acidic (Henehan, M.J. and 13 others 2019. Rapid ocean acidification and protracted Earth system recovery followed the end-Cretaceous Chicxulub impact. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Online; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1905989116).
https://earthlogs.org/2019/10/25/what-followed-the-k-pg-extinction-event/

The effects of the sulphuric acid on the climate was so severe that the computer simulations found it would have taken at least 30 years for the global climate to recover.
https://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/dinosaurs-extinction-simulation

And these dissenting evolutionists even got into print voicing their concerns:

What do we do with these impact scenarios? Naturally, we compare them with the evidence from the geological record. Birds, tortoises, and mammals live on land and breathe air: the evidence from the K-T boundary shows that they survived the K-T boundary event. Therefore they and the air they breathed weren't set on broil for several hours. To put it simply, these scenarios did not happen.
History of Life, Richard Cowen, 2000, p.290.
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen2b.html

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

Birds, Tortoises, Mammals: example 2 extant monotremes.

The survival of birds is the strangest of all the K-T boundary events, if we are to accept the catastrophic scenarios. Smaller dinosaurs overlapped with larger birds in size and in ecological roles as terrestrial bipeds. How did birds survive while dinosaurs did not? Birds seek food in the open, by sight; they are small and warm-blooded, with high metabolic rates and small energy stores. Even a sudden storm or a slightly severe winter can cause high mortality among bird populations. Yet an impact scenario, according to its enthusiasts, includes "a nightmare of environmental disasters, including storms, tsunamis, cold and darkness, greenhouse warming, acid rains and global fires." There must be some explanation for the survival of birds, turtles, and crocodiles through any catastrophe of this scale, or else the catastrophe models are wrong.
History of Life, Richard Cowen, 2000, p.295.
https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/education/events/cowen3b.html

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

Birds, Turtles, Crocodiles.

Some critics, including paleontologist Robert Bakker, argue that such an impact would have killed frogs as well as dinosaurs, yet the frogs survived the extinction event.
http://web.archive.org/web/20211228051109/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater

Frogs

Frogs

Frogs

there was no extinction in the insects, a group that should have been the most sensitive to a global catastrophe predicted by the impact advocates. ... Nor do the birds show much extinction, even though they too should have been vulnerable (Chiappe 1995). ...
some extreme impact scenarios postulate extensive acid rain bathing the earth for a long time after the impact. However, the survival of amphibians shows that this is simply a fantasy (Weil 1984). Amphibians breathe through their porous skins and are sensitive to slight changes in the acidity of their watery habitat. Even now, the slightly more acidic conditions of lakes and ponds due to human-induced acid rain are causing frogs and salamanders to die out rapidly. If the entire earth had been subjected to a huge acid bath, there simply would not be a frog or salamander alive on the earth today. p.38.
After the Dinosaurs, Donald R. Prothero, 2006.

Frogs, Salamanders

Frogs, Salamanders

Frogs, Salamanders

So just how would the birds have gone with all of this happening?

Bird: Canary. Very vulnerable to airborne poisons!

Canaries were used "in coal mines to detect carbon monoxide and other toxic gases before they hurt humans". "Canaries, like other birds, are good early detectors of carbon monoxide because they're vulnerable to airborne poisons."
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/story-real-canary-coal-mine-180961570/

Birds are vulnerable to airborne poisons!!

Since birds are vulnerable to airborne poisons it is very clear that they should have gone completely extinct along with the dinosaurs when the meteor supposedly impacted our planet 66 million years ago. In fact all susceptible species like birds, salamanders, and frogs, probably would have gone extinct even before the dinosaurs!

It makes sense that the most susceptible species would be the very first to go. And that means birds, salamanders, and frogs!

And Evolutionists are completely at a loss how to explain the survival of the birds:

Of the many great dinosaurian lineages, only the birds made it through the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous - but nobody is quite sure why. p.162.
Flying Dinosaurs: How fearsome reptiles became birds, John Pickrell, 2014.

Early members of the palaeognath lineage survived (the group that includes ostriches and emus), as did members of the wildfowl and gamebird lineage, as did members of the lineage that led to seabirds, hawks, perching birds, and so on.
Why these bird groups survived when other dinosaur groups didn't is a good question, and one that hasn't been answered satisfactorily. p.208.
Dinosaurs: How they lived and evolved. Darren Naish & Paul M. Barrett, CSIRO Publishing, 2018.

Simply a Fantasy

Of course there is no answer. If we accept the Alvarez Hypothesis, then the birds should have gone extinct with the dinosaurs, along with the salamanders and frogs. So just what conclusion can we draw from this? Actually, one of the dissenting Evolutionists has given us the answer:

some extreme impact scenarios postulate extensive acid rain bathing the earth for a long time after the impact. However, the survival of amphibians shows that this is simply a fantasy (Weil 1984). p.38.
After the Dinosaurs, Donald R. Prothero, 2006.

If the extreme impact scenarios are simply a fantasy, then so is the evidence supporting the Alvarez Hypothesis. This includes rocks, and fossils [including embedded/ingested tektites from the impact fallout], and also the 170 km wide* 20 km deep crater in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico!
* See Ref 3.

And our conclusion of all of this being simply a fantasy throws a complete spanner into the works! Just what does it mean if all of this is simply a fantasy?

1. The rocks can no longer be considered to give a reliable record of the past of this planet!
2. The fossils can no longer be considered to give a reliable record of the past life of this planet!
3. The 170 km wide* 20 km deep Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico can no longer be considered to be a reliable record of a supposed meteor impact that occurred 66 million years ago and which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs!
   * See Ref 3.

And just what does all this mean?

No meteor impacted this planet 66 million years ago causing some supposed extinction of the dinosaurs.

Some species that should be extinct!

Some species that should be extinct!

Some species that should be extinct!

A complete fabrication

In fact if the fossils are not a reliable record of past life then the dinosaur fossils are in question. All of them! From this we can conclude that the non-avian dinosaurs never existed as living breathing creatures and that none of them ever lived or walked on this planet at any time in the past.

But the fossils exist so how can this be? Simply that they are not fossil remains, but fossil constructions. When this world came into existence it appears that something like many thousands of feet of rock layers full of all sorts of interesting stuff were added. All a fabrication or a construction.

And the interesting question is just who or what could have done this?

A far more interesting question is just who or what would have the actual power to be able to do this!

As a Christian I have absolutely no problem with these questions. None whatsoever.

But I think the Evolutionists are in trouble. Real big trouble.

This is an act of creation and the only thing that could do that is a deity.

And that is completely outside the scope of Evolutionary Science.

But not Christianity.

The level of detail that has been built into these added rock layers by this deity is far beyond the comprehension of mortal minds!

REFERENCES

Page design/construction Stephen Buckley 2020.