The day the dinosaurs died

May 9, 2025

50 min episode · 2 min read

Ken LaCovara

Episode

50 min

Read time

2 min

AI-Generated Summary

Published Dec 25, 2025

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.

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