The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions

by Charles Frankel

The discovery of the giant Chicxulub impact crater, buried off the coast of Mexico, unveiled the solution to one of Earth's greatest mysteries--what killed the dinosaurs. Scientists uncovered physical evidence to explain the mass extinction that rocked the Earth 65 million years ago. Step-by-step, The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions tells this great scientific detective story. Charles Frankel recounts the birth of the cosmic hypothesis, which holds that the crash of a meteor on the Earth's surface killed two-thirds of life and all the dinosaurs. He first provides a dramatic account of the impact and its aftermath. Frankel then goes on to detail the controversy that preceded the acceptance of the cosmic hypothesis, the search for the crater, its discovery and ongoing exploration, and the effect of the giant impact on the biosphere. In addition, he reviews other mass extinctions in the fossil record and the threat of asteroids and comets to our planet today. More than 70 photographs and diagrams enhance and help illustrate the material. Filled with drama and interesting science, The End of the Dinosaurs will readily appeal to both the general reader fascinated with the subject and the specialist always searching for more clues to this great mystery. Charles Frankel has written a number of articles on the earth sciences in books and magazines. His many books include Volcanoes of the Solar System (Cambridge University Press 1996).

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Geology, History, Evolution, Animals

236 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 1999

Reviews

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made a deal with an evangelical preacher I ended up sitting next to on a transatlantic flight. We had a perfectly friendly and civilized discussion about creationism. I told him that I was sure God wanted us to believe in the Big Bang, it was so much more beautiful than Genesis 1. It was my best shot, but of course he wasn't convinced. Anyway, we agreed that each of us would recommend a book to the other one, and we'd both read them.

His recommendation to me was Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict: Historical Evidences for the Christian Faith, and I didn't like it much. My recommendation to him was Frankel, which is one of the best popular science books I know. He emailed me a few weeks later, and asked if I thought that the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary could mark the Biblical Flood. I answered that I was pretty sure that was not possible, since the Flood probably happened about 8,000 to 10,000 years ago when the last Ice Age ended and sea levels rose a hundred meters or so, while the K-T boundary was about 65 million years ago. As far as I could see, he wasn't offended. He just thought it was interesting to talk to someone from such a different background.

This really is a great book, and I'm sorry he didn't appreciate it more. Frankel shows you how damn exciting science can be! There are all these competing theories about why the dinosaurs become extinct, and the way he tells it, it's just like a murder mystery. Hercule Poirot calls them in to the library. "So! We have seen ze mass extinction, ze tektites, ze shocked quartz, ze thin layer of iridium! And zere eez ze leetle matter of ze crater at Chicxulub! Monsieur Méteorite! I have used my leetle grey cells, and I can only see one explanation!" There was apparently a firestorm that covered the entire planet, when ejecta from the impact fell back into the atmosphere and burned up; it was as though the sky had been turned into a grill. No large land animal survived.

In the final chapter, he has a table of known large meteor impacts over the last 500 million years. They come plunking down rather more frequently than I'd realized, and make hydrogen bombs look like children's toys. Why don't we spend more money on Spaceguard?

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good science writing - reasonably accessible to a broad audience. It focused in on the Chixalub impact partucluarly but more broadly dealt with the notion that there is fair evidence that other mass-extinctions are possibly linked to impact events. While I found it very interesting and informative, I had occasional problems with some of the references to CO2 based global warming assumptions but the rest of this read was good enough that such minor points were easily overlooked - the author even seems to have recognized an apparent contradiction in his way of thinking in scenario where CO2 levels would have been expected to rise radically suddenly but that the data actually shows a decrease in global climate associated in the data for that period. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in mass extinction or impact events, or even more generally historical geology.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I saw the cover of this book I wanted to read it because it has the illustration of a dinosaur. I am fascinated by dinosaurs so of course I grabbed this book.
The book is not to explain (per say) the end of the dinosaur species, but to better understand the impacts from comets and asteroids that have occurred on this planet. It does state the many questions that scientists have raised and tried to answer concerning the end of the dinosaur species and includes a lot of research concerning such topic.

It was very interesting to read how we can read the history of Earth in rocks, craters, etc.

After reading this book, I am interested in reading more books concerning craters.

[Bryan Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

the end of the dinosaurs. something that I liked was the exploration of the archaeologists for the discoveris of the fossils of the dinosaurs .
I recommend this book because it is very interesting about the history of the discoveries of the beings that inhabited this earth. For example Triceratops was the last dinosaur to die and ichtyosaur was the first dinosaur on the earth.

[Aaron · Rating 2 out of 5]

A bit dry and repetitive in places, the author sometimes appeared over fond of long lists, this book is nevertheless a good introduction into the topic of the science and mechanism of the Chicxulub impact event and its place in the history of life on earth.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

The End of the Dinosaurs: Chicxulub Crater and Mass Extinctions
Frankel, Charles
a very early reader for dinosaurs