T.rex and the Crater of Doom

by Walter Álvarez

Sixty-five million years ago, a comet or asteroid larger than Mount Everest slammed into the Earth, inducing an explosion equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. Vaporized detritus blasted through the atmosphere upon impact, falling back to Earth around the globe. Disastrous environmental consequences ensued: a giant tsunami, continent-scale wildfires, darkness, and cold, followed by sweltering greenhouse heat. When conditions returned to normal, half the plant and animal genera on Earth had perished.



This horrific chain of events is now widely accepted as the solution to a great scientific mystery: what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Walter Alvarez, one of the Berkeley scientists who discovered evidence of the impact, tells the story behind the development of the initially controversial theory. It is a saga of high adventure in remote locations, of arduous data collection and intellectual struggle, of long periods of frustration ended by sudden breakthroughs, of friendships made and lost, and of the exhilaration of discovery that forever altered our understanding of Earth's geological history.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, Dinosaurs, History, Palaeontology, Geology, Biology

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Walter Álvarez is a professor of geology at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of the best-selling T. Rex and the Crater of Doom. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and a past recipient of the Penrose Medal, the highest award given by the Geological Society of America. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the cover to this book. I didn't love the material inside the book nearly as much, but it was still pretty interesting.

A bunch of years ago the dinosaurs had a really bad day when a meteor or comet the size of Los Angeles crashed into Mexico and killed them all off, except for the ones that were on Noah's Ark, and the still existing dinosaurs that live in Loch Ness and Lake Champlain, called Nessy and Champy respectively. Those facts aren't in this book. But you learn a lot about rocks and things about geology and dating material, which would be cool, if it wasn't all just the devil manipulating us with his illusions to make us all believe in things like dinosaurs living on the Earth as a dominant life form for about 150 million years, which is millions of times longer than the bible says we have been here, and who are you going to believe, scientists with their numbers, and their research (and besides look at the scientists in this book, they are nerds, they look like nerds, like, hello i'm poindexter, I like math... would you believe them or say the star of Invasion USA! Chuck Norris, or former teen heart throb Kirk Cameron? As if it's a competition....).

All bullshit aside, this book is a fun quick read. It's short (146 pages if you ignore the footnotes that are all just references to science papers), and it has a cool cover, and it's about fucking dinosaurs, which are always cool.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“…Noah’s Ark, in Ken Ham’s understanding of the world, was crammed stem to stern with dinosaurs.” -Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, Oct 2014

For the religiously inclined, magical events (allegedly) occur that could never happen in the natural world. In order to accept these events as legitimate one must suspend disbelief—an action commonly termed as “faith.” In science, one does exactly the opposite—the evidence is scrutinized, the data is analyzed, flaws are ferreted out, tests are designed and administered, and then, if there is anything left standing, the results are submitted for peer review.

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, aside from having one of the greatest titles in the history of scientific literature, is essentially a diagram of how real science is done. It is an anatomy of geological and paleontological discovery; of how and why the Cretaceous period ended so abruptly, taking with it T. Rex and the vast majority of her contemporaries.

NOTE: Published in 1997, Dr Alvarez frequently makes reference to the “Tertiary” period. Tertiary is now an obsolete term largely because of its historical association with scriptural geologists and young-earth creationism. The time span previously defined as Tertiary is now divided into two separate epochs: the Paleocene and the Eocene. The mass extinction event Dr Alvarez references as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K-T) extinction is now commonly referred to as the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction or the K-Pg event.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, ok, so I understand that if you bought this book based on this cover art (e.g. the giant Tyrannosaurus rex) you might be a little pissed off. Whoever was in charge of marketing this volume at Princeton University Press clearly knew that a whole book about the science of geology and specifically the proving of the impact theory to explain the unusually high amounts of iridium in the banded layer of rock known as the "K-T boundary" that separates older Cretaceous period stone from newer Tertiary sediments would not sell a lot of product. However, put a T. rex on the cover and you are in business. Notwithstanding the apparent bait and switch, I truly enjoyed this book. If you have any doubt that an asteroid or comet hit the Earth 66 million years ago Walter Alvarez will provide you a front-row seat on how he developed and later proved to the scientific community that the mass extinction event that ended the reign of the dinosaurs was caused by a gigantic extraterrestrial object, about the size of Mt. Everest, striking our planet. So long T. rex, we never knew you.

For those readers still jonesing to read about Tyrannosaurus rex let me highly recommend David Hone's The Tyrannosaur Chronicles: The Biology of the Tyrant Dinosaurs.

[Riku Sayuj · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was promised dinosaurs and I got only scientists searching for a buried crater. A word repeated thrice in a book does not its title make.

>The initial 50 pages or so are worth reading. For the rest, go watch some NatGeo doc.

[Tanja Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a teenager when “Jurassic park” was released and I remember the excitement caused by the book, the movie and the development of discoveries in paleontology. The confirmation that the dinosaurs had been wiped out by an asteroid came around this same time. I never really wondered about the discovery. That’s what this book covers and I am more enlightened now.

There was quite a bit of controversy that the dinosaurs should have gotten wiped out within the space of a few years. The fossil record of large animals is scant. The general thought in the 1970’s was that it had been a gradual process. Then it was the question of what had killed them and finally, where the crater was. It’s an excellent book about how science and intellectual discourse works.

[Paul (Life In The Slow Lane) · Rating 5 out of 5]

When sh*t REALLY got real! A.K.A.

This book isn't a B Grade horror destined for the movie screens of 2nd rate cinemas. This is real. A comet the size of Mt Everest travelling at 30 Km every second smashes into The Gulf of Mexico. It creates a crater over 60 miles wide and vaporises millions of tons of rock. What does rock vapour even look like?

This, of course, happened 65 million years ago. Otherwise, T-Rex would still be happily wandering the planet...and Mother Nature would be a lot happier than she currently is. This is written by the man who discovered, and studied the cause of the end of the Cretaceous...so...plenty of cred. You do have to wade through some heavy duty concepts of geology, particle physics, astrophysics and geochemistry, but fear not; they're well explained and easy to digest. Interesting even, spesh if you're the nerdish kind. I surprised myself by reading the whole book without skimming, except for one poor chapter that caused my eyes to glaze over.

This has to be one of the most well researched books I have ever read and I would recommend it to anyone interested in palaeontology or geology or giant explosions! It's not too long. Go on, give it a go. 👍👍👍👍👍

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

This doesn't focus in on the dinosaurs around the time of the extinction event so don't go in wanting that. This focuses almost entirely in on the geology used to determine how the extinction event occurred and where.
This was absolutely fascinating, and Mr. Alvarez's writing made it approachable and easy to understand for a casual reader. He took the time to explain size and speeds in ways I was able to grasp quickly and the pacing of this worked almost like an adventure novel, but non-fiction. I was a bit hesitant with this one, but I really recommend it if the topic sounds interesting at all. It's one I've already bought a copy of for my own shelves.

[denudatio_pulpae · Rating 3 out of 5]

65 milionów lat temu doszło do zderzenia ogromnego ciała niebieskiego z Ziemią. Kometa miała średnicę ok. 10 km, gdyby ją przeturlać pod Mount Everest okazałoby się, że jest od niego wyższa. Kawał skały (lub bryły lodu).

"Dinozaury i krater śmierci" to historia tego wielkiego odkrycia. To, co teraz wydaje się nam oczywiste, na początku było dla wielu naukowców kompletną bzdurą. Walter Alvarez poprowadził nas przez ten długi i żmudny proces, pełen pułapek i ślepych zaułków. Ich upór i cierpliwość zaowocowała - w końcu odnaleziono krater Chicxulub, świadectwo katastrofy, która wykończyła dinozaury. W 1994 roku naukowcy mieli również sposobność zaobserwować uderzenia odłamków komety Shoemaker-Levy 9, które spadły na Jowisza. Było to dowodem, że takie zderzenia zdarzają się również obecnie.
7/10

[Daphne · Rating 5 out of 5]

:*(


It was a great little book. I listened to the audio version which was pretty short for the page length. I think I must have missed some great illustrations, so I'll be picking up the text version at some point to get the whole picture. What I enjoyed most about this book is that it was written by one of the individuals that actually figured the cause, location, and beginning of the story that caused the K-T extinction. I've read, watched documentaries, and sat through many lectures about mass extinctions and this one in focus, but hearing about it from the actual scientist was splendid.

Meteors don't give a ***k.


You get a real sense of how a scientist comes up with a hypothesis, works through the science to come up with a working theory, and then goes on to try to prove it and get the consensus of their fellow scientists. It's not only a great book about one particular event in the earth's history, but also a wonderful learning tool if you want to help someone learn more about how science actually works.

Highly recommend reading to everyone, but especially this dude:

[Numidica · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite science books. It's the story of the father-son team of Walter Alvarez, paleontologist, and his dad, a physicist, searching for and finding the evidence that a giant asteroid killed off the dinosaurs. It is inspiring to read about these two men collaborating and using their respective skills and the scientific method to find truth, or at least to establish a theory. And if you are a math-science-phobe, don't worry, the writing is clear and easily understood; think Longitude, by Dava Sobel, as a comparison.

[Margie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Walter is such a great storyteller. He does an incredible job of making a complex scientific discovery very accessible to the general public, yet never talks down to the audience. A fine job of combining scientific detail with an interesting story.

[Mina · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting mixture of autobiography/memoirs, history of interdisciplinary science and the exploration of how and why the dinosaurs vanished. A bit outdated at times but provided a perfect basis for my term paper

[John Mccullough · Rating 5 out of 5]

For years I taught a course at the Univ of Utah called "The Human Discovery." It consisted of reading books that conformed to three criteria. First, it had to deal with an interesting topic illuminating the discovery of some aspect of our human existence. Second, it had to have been written by someone who was directly involved in the discovery. Third, there had to be a movie which dealt with the topic either directly or indirectly. Fourth, incidentally, the books ought to be readable and inexpensive to save students $. Some of the topics were DNA (James Watson's book, The Double Helix), the Linear B writing system of the Homeric Greeks (Chadwick's The Decipherment of Linear B), debunking fossil embarrassments (Weiner's The Piltdown Hoax), the Dead Sea Scrolls (various books), and so forth.

Alvarez's book falls neatly into that list although I never used it, but perhaps should have. Walter and his father Luis and many other scholars became interested in the probably sudden change in flora and fauna that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous and beginning of the Tertiary Periods - the end of dinosaurs and beginning of the reign of birds and mammals. How come so sudden? Fight the uniformitarian mantra so religiously drilled into palaeontologists and others, it was thought the event was really not so sudden, but there were few deposits indicating lots of time involved. Alvarez and his co-workers eventually became convinced the event was swift and catastrophic. With years of research they eventually accepted an extra-terrestrial explanation, and a big one it was. The story is now well-known so there can be no spoilers in the telling here.

About 66 million years ago (newest dating) an asteroid struck the earth and created a catastrophe for life. It is hard to imagine the event. The asteroid was probably 10 km (6 miles) in diameter traveling at 30 km/sec (20 miles per second). It hit just a few km north of the Yucatán Peninsula and blasted a hole 40 km (25 miles) deep in the earth. The heat generated in the air immediately in front of the asteroid was 4 to 5 times hotter than the sun. It created a crater many km wide and sent a tsunami as far north as Tennessee, although the geography was different at that time. It created an ecological catastrophe, destroying at least half the world's species; in animals the bigger ones did poorly.

This book clearly outlines the evidence for this Chicxulub Event and how it was eventually determined. It is instructive in emphasising the scientific process as actually applied an reminds me of James Watson's book mentioned above. It is a good read for young scientists of any subject and relates the importance of interdisciplinary and international collaboration. This is an old edition (1998); a newer 2015 edition is available with newer information, but this earlier effort has the main elements well-established.

[Elentarri · Rating 4 out of 5]

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom is a pulp fiction title that really doesn't fit with the nonfiction contents of the book.  So if you are expecting dinosaurs, you will be disappointed.  This is a book about a geology, astrology, physics and an ancient mystery that gets solved by a collection of scientists all working together. 


The mystery to be solved is the cause of the mass extinction about 65 million years ago that exterminated the dinosaurs and a large portion of life on this planet.  The story Alvarez tells is the description of the scientific investigations which led to the development of the impact hypothesis, the various bits of evidence to strengthen this hypothesis, and the subsequent search for the impact crater.  I particularly enjoyed how Alvarez shows how science is supposed to work: by explaining how his ideas developed, how other scientists in different fields ended up involved and contributing to his project, their contributions (whether confirmations or poking holes in his ideas and methods), the blind-alleys, the disappointments and excitement, as well as additional work by other scientists to expand on the original hypothesis.

Walter Alvarez tells a compelling story about solving an ancient mystery, while also making complex scientific details accessible to the general public.

My only complaint is the lack of a map(s) to show the location of the "Crater of Doom" and other relevant sites.

[Todd Martin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Despite its rather sensationalistic title, ‘T. Rex and the Crater of Doom’ provides a very nice overview of the asteroid impact which caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (and other species) 65 million years ago. It also describes the scientific investigation which led up to the theory’s development and the subsequent search for the impact crater.

The book is written by Walter Alvarez, who along with his father (Nobel prize winning physicist Luis Alvarez) and 2 colleagues, came up with the asteroid impact theory to explain a clay layer containing higher than normal levels of iridium which occurs right at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary. Since iridium is common in asteroids, but very uncommon on the Earth, they postulated that an asteroid had been the cause of the extinction.

The book is written for a general audience, and is both well written and interesting.

[Ellee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Walter Alvarez's book is a great discovery story! Well-written for the lay audience, it captures one's attention and takes readers through the many dead ends and ultimately, discoveries, that make up science and the process that scientists go through formulating and testing their ideas.

Highly recommended for all science lovers, dinosaur buffs (if you haven't read it already!), everyone wanting to find out more about the world around us, and of course, anyone who's ever wondered what really happened to the dinosaurs.

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audiobook on 4 cd's


No-one becomes bored by the Yucatan catastrophe do they, and this is a good rendition that is narrated well.

[Kayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

You already know a book is gonna hit when it starts with a Tolkein quote

[Jason Chavez · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was amazing the clues scientists used to solve the controversial theory of an impact that ended an era. Though difficult to read at times with some of the scientific explanations, this account by Alvarez was fascinating and enjoyable from beginning to end.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful story of how Alvarez and other scientists found the cause of the KT extinction event.

Loved this book.

5 stars

[Mario · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written by Walter Alvarez, the first person to put forward evidence that the dinosaur extinction event was caused by a massive asteroid or comet impact.

Rather than describing the event and its impact the book charts how the theory was developed and eventually proven, from first ideas to final discovery of the impact site, the Gulf of Mexico. Considering much of the book was centred on painstaking geological studies it did a very good job of maintaining interest in what might be seen as a rather dry subject. I also felt the book was pitched very well, neither dumbed down nor swamped with scientific detail.

When I was a child there were all sorts of theories as to what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and it is remarkable how an event 66,000,000 years ago can now be proven to be the cause.

[J.S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit old (1997) but a worthwhile look at how the idea that an asteroid impact caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was eventually proven. Written by Walter Alvarez, the one who originally proposed the idea with his father (who passed away before conclusive evidence was established). He explains how they came up with the idea based upon the rock layer commonly known as the KT Boundary. They subsequently found that, regardless of location around the world, the layer of rock had very high levels of iridium, an element rare at the earth's crust but usually found in small but consistent levels due to the constant rate of small meteorites that burn up in the atmosphere and settle on the earth's surface. Their theory went in the face of the accepted geological belief that only gradual forces had shaped the planet's surface by proposing that occasional catastrophic events also had an effect. Eventually, the site of the giant impact was found to be on the Yucatan Peninsula. I'm not sure how more recent studies and observations have since altered the view, since I believe I've read accounts that present evidence that the dinosaurs actually lived for thousands of years after the impact, but I think this is still a worthwhile read for those interested in the subject.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Who could resist a title like this? It's an adventure story, perhaps even a bit of a detective tale (well, investigative, anyway), with plenty of scientific detail but not enough to make my eyes glaze over. Excellent for readers like me - absolutely not scientifically oriented but fascinated nonetheless.

[Jrobertus · Rating 2 out of 5]

like "lucy" by johansen, this book gives a clear and engaging account of what scientists know of a popular field of study. in this case the meteor that smacked into the yucatan triggering the "kt" species extinction. a good read.

[Akrabar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating read. This book gives a detailed account of what the life of a scientist is like - years of painstaking work with lots of failures and finally (if luck) culminating in a success. Very accessible to lay readers and presented like a detective solving a murder mystery.

[bsc · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice little book about what we think happened to the dinosaurs and how we came to figure it out. Alvarez does a good job explaining the science without getting too technical.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This is the Earth at a time when the dinosaurs roamed -- a lush and fertile planet. A piece of rock just six miles wide changed all that. It hit with the force of 10,000 nuclear weapons. A trillion tons of dirt and rock hurtled into the atmosphere, creating a suffocating blanket of dust, the sun was powerless to penetrate for a thousand years…” -- Armageddon

The abrupt extinction of dinosaurs is one of the most popularized topics in paleontology. Why, after all, did the very last dynasties as a final point end in overall extinction?

In reality, however, the dinosaurs' history encloses the drama of much more than a single death. They suffered three or four key catastrophes during their elongated prevalence, each one thinning the ranks of the entire clan. And after each such fall, they recouped their evolutionary fate, rising again to fill the terrestrial system with yet another wave of new species and families of species.

The final complete extermination did not come until 65 million years ago, at what geologists label the "Time of Great Dying," the grandest evolutionary catastrophe of all time.

This book is the tale of how Earth historians uncovered the evidence for one great catastrophe in the Earth's past—the collision of a huge rock that fell from outer space 65 million years ago, excavating a gargantuan crater in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico and causing such riot to the environment that a broad variety of plants and animals perished forever.

The most celebrated of the victims in this cataclysm was the great carnivorous dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus rex.

The legend of the impact and the extinction it caused is striking and horrendous, although the passage of 65 million years makes it seem contentedly remote. But running parallel to the historical account of the event itself is the very human story of how Earth historians discovered the rock record of the great impact and learned to read and interpret the evidence.

This book tells the story of challenge by a few geologists to what their science had long believed to be true, of stern defense of the traditional view by other geologists, of conflict and friendship, of adventure in distant places, of painstaking measurements in the laboratory, of bewilderment and discovery, and of the general effort by scientists from many countries to resolve a fascinating conundrum.

Alvarez has divided his book into seven chapters:

1. Armageddon
2. Ex Libro Lapidum Historia Mundi
3. Gradualist versus Catastrophist
4. Iridium
5. The Search for the Impact Site
6. The Crater of Doom
7. The World after Chicxulub

This book, in particular is also the chronicle of how geology and the other disciplines which study the Earth have emerged as fully mature sciences, distinguished by their intrinsically interdisciplinary nature, by the complexity of their subject matter, and by the obvious requirement to move from reductionistic to holistic science in order to achieve their central goal of understanding the Earth.

Through the 20th century, physics and chemistry, and recently molecular biology, have made giant strides in understanding Nature by the analytical approach—by reducing problems to their original components and studying these components in isolation. In the 21st century, science will be in a position to begin putting the pieces together, in order to seek a synthetic or holistic understanding of Nature.

The Earth sciences are inherently synthetic and are therefore uniquely placed to lead this development. The story of research on impacts and mass extinctions illustrates in detail how this can happen.

This book is meant for the layman and the serious reader alike.

“Picture a day sixty-five million years ago! On the morning of that day, Tyrannosaurus rex stood at the apex of creation. But by nightfall a gigantic comet or asteroid, as big as Mount Everest, had slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula. The explosion on impact, which took less time than it takes to read this paragraph, was equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. It produced a cloud of rolling debris that blackened the sky for months as well as other geologic disasters—and triggered the demise of T Rex….”

We know what happened for the most part because Walter Alvarez—synthesizing the findings of experts from a variety of scientific fields—has written a gripping story of the decades-long search for the cause of the dinosaur’s extinction.

The best thing about Alvarez’s book is the ease with which the narrative progresses. It is extremely picturesque. The reader would almost live a movie throughout the 200 odd pages of the tome.

Grab a copy if you choose.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book makes a good companion piece to a book I read a few years ago, entitled Night Comes to the Cretaceous: Dinosaur Extinction and the Transformation of Modern Geology by James Lawrence Powell, which was about the debate within earth science communities regarding why dinosaurs became extinct, and the global geological anomaly referred to as the KT Boundary. While a physicist father and his geologist son studied the unusual presence of certain minerals and other trace elements in this boundary layer, they formulated a theory speculating that the the cause of it was likely the impact of a large meteor, resulting in the demise of all large animals, as well as 70% of all living organisms.

This book is written by the geologist son. He details how the theory developed over decades, with dozens of false starts and disappointments along the way, and credits the collaboration of dozens of scientists, each providing laborious pieces to the puzzle in an effort to locate the crater that would’ve been left as a result of the impact. It’s not as exciting as the T.rex on the cover and the title would have you believe, and the author seems to do his best to explain the science in a way a lay person would understand, although, not being science-minded myself, it didn’t always make sense, but at less than 150-pages long, it was still easy enough to get through, and adequately highlighted the Herculean effort involved in trying to locate evidence to prove their theory.

[Seth D Michaels · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brief and fun work of popular science that’s partly about its subject matter - the discovery of the impact that killed the dinosaurs - and partly about the process of science generally, showing the long, unsteady process of collaboration across countries and disciplines that led to the solution of one of the great mysteries. I very much remember “what happened to the dinosaurs?” as a live and possibly unsolvable problem when I was a kid and it’s remarkable that we learned the answer during my lifetime.

[Tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good (but short!) overview of the science that led up to the discovery of the impact that killed the dinosaurs. It's really strange to think that as early as the 1970s, that theory wasn't even considered yet.

I'm a scientist so I liked it, if you're looking for more of a pop-science book then the writing might be a bit dry.

4/5 stars.