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Description
More of my astronomical art appears in my DA "Paleo & Sci Illo" gallery:

lexlothor.deviantart.com/galle…

This picture combines two of my favorite subjects: astronomy and paleontology. Late in 1980 I attended a seminar at the University of Washington. The guest speaker was Walter Alvarez. What he had to say changed my perspective on the universe for the rest of my life. He described his research in rates of sedimentation in Late Cretaceous limestones and how he had discovered an iridium spike at the K/T boundary. His explanation that this anomalous component represented the instant in which an asteroid slammed into the earth was electrifying. While others who listened to the lecture were scratching their heads, I extrapolated these data to the realization that perhaps ALL of the period and epoch boundaries in the fossil record represented collisions with extraterrestrial bolides. Not only might the mass extinction of the dinosaurs be so explained but also the big Permian, Devonian and Triassic die offs as well.

I immediately went to work to create this image in radipograph ink and felt tip pen. it was published in 1981. It has never been distributed since. All of the continents of the Late Cretaceous are shown in their correct position and with the their shorelines of the time. North America where the impact occurred is toward the upper limb of the Earth.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander

Description
More of my astronomical art appears in my DA "Paleo & Sci Illo" gallery:

lexlothor.deviantart.com/galle…

This picture combines two of my favorite subjects: astronomy and paleontology. Late in 1980 I attended a seminar at the University of Washington. The guest speaker was Walter Alvarez. What he had to say changed my perspective on the universe for the rest of my life. He described his research in rates of sedimentation in Late Cretaceous limestones and how he had discovered an iridium spike at the K/T boundary. His explanation that this anomalous component represented the instant in which an asteroid slammed into the earth was electrifying. While others who listened to the lecture were scratching their heads, I extrapolated these data to the realization that perhaps ALL of the period and epoch boundaries in the fossil record represented collisions with extraterrestrial bolides. Not only might the mass extinction of the dinosaurs be so explained but also the big Permian, Devonian and Triassic die offs as well.

I immediately went to work to create this image in radipograph ink and felt tip pen. it was published in 1981. It has never been distributed since. All of the continents of the Late Cretaceous are shown in their correct position and with the their shorelines of the time. North America where the impact occurred is toward the upper limb of the Earth.

art & text (c) John P. Alexander