Kevin O. Pope
Encyclopedia
Dr. Kevin O. Pope is the former NASA archaeologist and founder of Geo Eco Arch Research who helped connect the Chicxulub Crater
to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
. In 2002, Pope, along with the Geological Society of America, released a press release saying that the original KT impact event by a 10 km diameter asteroid was not large enough to trigger a dust-connected 'cosmic winter'. It would require significantly more fine dust to be generated in order to create this effect than has been detected http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc012402.html. Instead he proposes that sulfate aerosols and ash from global fires was enough to create the effect of global cooling by interfering with photosynthesis.
He has also questioned whether the current size of an asteroid thought to be large enough to create a global impact is in fact too small. The current size suggestion is between 1.5–2 km which Pope argues would only create regional devastation.
He has also worked on investigating quartz
found in Australia that has been "shocked" to such the extent that it has become deformed. He believes that these may have formed due to the Bedout impact as it would require enormous forces to deform the quartz. The Bedout impact coincides with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the period known at the end-Permian where 90% of Marine and 80% of land life disappeared.
Chicxulub Crater
The Chicxulub crater is an ancient impact crater buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Its center is located near the town of Chicxulub, after which the crater is named...
to the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event
The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, formerly named and still commonly referred to as the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, occurred approximately 65.5 million years ago at the end of the Maastrichtian age of the Cretaceous period. It was a large-scale mass extinction of animal and plant...
. In 2002, Pope, along with the Geological Society of America, released a press release saying that the original KT impact event by a 10 km diameter asteroid was not large enough to trigger a dust-connected 'cosmic winter'. It would require significantly more fine dust to be generated in order to create this effect than has been detected http://abob.libs.uga.edu/bobk/ccc/cc012402.html. Instead he proposes that sulfate aerosols and ash from global fires was enough to create the effect of global cooling by interfering with photosynthesis.
He has also questioned whether the current size of an asteroid thought to be large enough to create a global impact is in fact too small. The current size suggestion is between 1.5–2 km which Pope argues would only create regional devastation.
He has also worked on investigating quartz
Quartz
Quartz is the second-most-abundant mineral in the Earth's continental crust, after feldspar. It is made up of a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall formula SiO2. There are many different varieties of quartz,...
found in Australia that has been "shocked" to such the extent that it has become deformed. He believes that these may have formed due to the Bedout impact as it would require enormous forces to deform the quartz. The Bedout impact coincides with the Permian–Triassic extinction event, the period known at the end-Permian where 90% of Marine and 80% of land life disappeared.