The day the dinosaurs died
Episode
50 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Fundraising & VC, Psychology & Behavior, Science & Discovery
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Extinction timeline: The asteroid impact created temperatures between toaster oven and pizza oven levels within one hour, functionally extinguishing all land-based dinosaurs that couldn't burrow underground before a 130-foot tsunami arrived hours later.
- ✓Fossil discovery formula: Find sedimentary rocks of the correct geological age in naturally exposed layers, then position yourself far from other paleontologists in unexplored regions to maximize chances of discovering scientifically significant specimens and new species.
- ✓New Jersey fossil significance: The Edelman site contains over 100,000 fossils from 100+ species interbedded with asteroid fallout including iridium spikes and shocked quartz, making it the only complete death assemblage showing an entire collapsed ecosystem from impact.
- ✓Deep time perspective: Earth's 4.5 billion year history compressed into a thousand-page book places humans as the final word, while dinosaurs went extinct on December 26 of a calendar year, demonstrating our species' recent arrival and fragile position.
What It Covers
Paleontologist Ken Lacovara reveals how a former fertilizer quarry in New Jersey contains the world's best fossil record of the asteroid impact that killed dinosaurs 66 million years ago, now open to the public.
Key Questions Answered
- •Extinction timeline: The asteroid impact created temperatures between toaster oven and pizza oven levels within one hour, functionally extinguishing all land-based dinosaurs that couldn't burrow underground before a 130-foot tsunami arrived hours later.
- •Fossil discovery formula: Find sedimentary rocks of the correct geological age in naturally exposed layers, then position yourself far from other paleontologists in unexplored regions to maximize chances of discovering scientifically significant specimens and new species.
- •New Jersey fossil significance: The Edelman site contains over 100,000 fossils from 100+ species interbedded with asteroid fallout including iridium spikes and shocked quartz, making it the only complete death assemblage showing an entire collapsed ecosystem from impact.
- •Deep time perspective: Earth's 4.5 billion year history compressed into a thousand-page book places humans as the final word, while dinosaurs went extinct on December 26 of a calendar year, demonstrating our species' recent arrival and fragile position.
Notable Moment
Lacovara discovered a seven-foot femur in Patagonia that led to Dreadnoughtus, a 65-ton dinosaur weighing as much as eight T-Rexes, which later appeared in Jurassic World, fulfilling his childhood paleontology dreams from second grade.
Episode Transcript
This message comes from Capital One with the VentureX card. Earn unlimited double miles, a $300 annual Capital One travel credit, and access to airport lounges. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Terms apply. Details at capital1.com. Before we start the show, you may have heard that president Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block all federal funding to NPR. This is the latest in a series of threats to media organizations across the country. Millions of people, people like you, depend on the NPR network as a vital source of news, entertainment, information, and connection. And we are proud to be here for you. And now, more than ever, we need you to be here for us. It's time to join the movement to defend public media. Visit donate.npr.org. And if you already support us via NPR plus or any other means, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Your support means so much to us now more than ever. You help make NPR shows freely available to everyone. We are proud to do this work for you and with you. This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED conferences To bring about the future we want to see around the world to understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you. You just don't know what you're gonna find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR, I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Two, three, four, five. Today on the show, the day the dinosaurs die. The directions are Last summer, I got a sneak peek at an unusual place in Southern New Jersey that has recently opened to the public. Oh, here's the Lowe's. Because down Route 55, just a few minutes off Exit 53 B, if you take a quick right onto a road that tucks behind the Lowe's hardware and the Chick fil A fast food restaurant Woah. There it is. Oh, it's beautiful. There looms a massive, modern wooden building set at the edge of a large pit of dirt. Humongous pit in front of it. But this isn't just dirt. This pit is actually a dry quarry full of fossils. Wait, Ken. Hi there. So nice to meet you. The paleontologist in charge of this operation you are. And my tour guide is Ken Lacovar. Sarah. And we are at the Edelman Fossil Park And Museum in Mantua Township, New Jersey. As we walked from the parking lot to the museum and the pit, Ken explained that paleontologists have been collecting fossils in Southern New Jersey for over a century. In 1858, the world's first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton is found and dug up 11 miles from here in Haddonfield, New Jersey. But in …
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