Robert Sawyer - End of an Era

Nonetheless, to this day, people ask me about the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. I explain that from time to time the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology surveys its members about the Alvarez theory. The first time such a survey was done, in 1985, only four percent believed that an asteroid impact had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. In a separate survey in 1991, Mike Brett-Surman at the Smithsonian found those paleontologists who didn’t believe in an impact-extinction correlation outnumbered those who did by four to one. The figure has fluctuated a lot in the intervening two decades, but a show-of-hands at the last SVP meeting indicated support was currently hovering at around twenty percent.

Really, many paleontologists see two separate issues. One is what caused the interesting geology at the K-T boundary—there’s a clay layer rich in iridium there. The other is what caused the extinctions. The geology may or may not have anything to do with the dyings.

Klicks believed the asteroid had killed off the dinosaurs; I vehemently disagreed. I wasn’t even convinced that Chicxulub was the source of the iridium layer; like Officer and Drake, I think it’s mostly volcanic in origin. Yes, iridium is rare on the surface of the Earth but plentiful in some kinds of meteors. But Earth does have the same iridium content as most rocky bodies in the solar system; ours is just fractionated into the deep mantle. There’s lots of evidence for volcanism at the end of the Cretaceous. The Deccan Traps in India, for instance, represent at least one million cubic kilometers of basalt that date from the K-T boundary. And volcanic material shows the same concentrations of arsenic and antimony found in the boundary-layer clay, concentrations that are three orders of magnitude greater than what’s normally associated with meteorites.

Indeed, the largest known impact craters on Earth, including the huge crater remnant off Nova Scotia, show no evidence of iridium deposition. Comets, sometimes named as an alternative culprit, are even less likely: there’s no direct evidence at all for iridium in cometary material.

Klicks and I had argued these issues many times in person, in print, and once when I was visiting scholar at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Alberta, where Klicks worked, on a phone-in show on the local community-access cable-TV channel. Klicks had been adamant during that debate: the impact of an asteroid had killed the dinosaurs. It was clear by the calls we got that those members of the public who didn’t have their own crackpot theories almost exclusively sided with Klicks. They wanted to know what all the fuss was about; hadn’t this issue been settled years ago? Everybody knew an asteroid impact had wiped out the dinosaurs.

Well, we were here.

And we were going to find out, one way or another.

I’ve been keeping this diary for years, and tonight, the most exciting of my life, I’m certainly not going to miss making an entry. Someday perhaps I’ll turn these notes into a book about our voyage (editing out the private stuff, of course), so I think I’ll add a little more background detail than usual.

I typed silently in the dark on my Toshiba palmtop for about an hour, its keyclick shut off and the brightness of its screen turned way down so as not to bother Klicks. When I was done, I swallowed the silver sleeping caplet dry.

Soon morning would be here. Soon we would step out into the Mesozoic.

Klicks always took his vacations in Toronto. Partly it was because his parents, both in their seventies, still lived there. Partly it was because his sister and her two sons, whom Klicks doted on, lived just east of the city in Pickering. And partly, I liked to think anyway, it was because he enjoyed spending time with Tess and me—although he did always turn down our invitations to stay at the house, preferring his sister’s luxury condo overlooking Lake Ontario.

But the main reasons for his frequent trips to the mighty T.O. were the culture and the food, both as good as New York’s. Klicks relished the finer things, and there weren’t a lot of them in Drumheller, Alberta. Tonight we were going to see Andrew Lloyd Webber’s latest musical, Robinson Crusoe , touted by the critics as his best since Phantom of the Opera . Even the most pathetic road company of a major show like that wouldn’t make it out to a small town in the middle of the Prairies.

It was an 8:00 p.m. curtain. That gave us time for a leisurely dinner at Ed’s Egalitarian, the new hot spot in the heart of the theater district.

“I hate menus like this,” I said, my eyes running up and down the three panels of steaks, poultry, seafood, salads, and soups. “Too much selection. I never know what to order.”

Tess, seated next to me, sighed that I-married-him-despite-his-faults sigh she was getting so good at as the years went by. “You do this every time we eat out. It’s not like you’re making a lifetime commitment.” She gave me a playful poke in the belly. “Just pick something that isn’t too fattening.”

That was sound advice. My weight usually started going up around Thanksgiving and continued to rise until the good weather came back in March. I always managed to take it off over the summer, and, if I was doing any fieldwork, I could get reasonably thin by late August, but right now I was up a good seven kilos. I glanced across the table at Klicks, who looked more like an athlete than a scientist, then turned my attention back to Tess. “What are you going to have?”

“The petite filet,” she said.

“Hmmm. I just don’t know…”

Klicks looked up from his menu. “Well, while you agonize over what to eat, I’ve got some news.”

Tess, always a devourer of any gossip, smiled that radiant smile of hers. “Really? What?”

“I’m moving to Toronto for a year. I’m taking my sabbatical at U of T.”

It was a good thing that the waiter hadn’t yet brought us our drinks. Otherwise, I might have spluttered gin and tonic all over the fancy lace tablecloth. “You’re doing what?” I said.

“I’m going to be working with Singh in the geology department. He’s gotten a small grant from—what do they call it? Whatever that new, scaled-down thing that replaced NASA is. Anyway, the money’s to study satellite photographs. We’re going to see if a technique can be worked out for identifying fossiliferous locales from space, as a prelude to an eventual Mars excursion.”

“If they ever get enough money together to do one,” I said. “But, Christ—that might put you in line for the mission. I’d heard they were considering having a paleontologist go with them.”

He made a dismissive motion with his hand. “It’s too early to speculate on that. Besides, you know what they say: the reason Canadians have an inferiority complex is that we’re the only country that routinely has to lay off our astronauts.”

I laughed, the better to hide my envy. “Lucky stiff.”

Klicks smiled. “Yeah. But now we’ll be able to spend a lot more time together.” He turned to my wife. “Tess, see what you can do about dumping Brandy.”

“Ha ha,” I said.

Our bow-tied waiter returned with our drinks, the aforementioned gin and tonic for me, an imported white wine for Klicks, and mineral water with a twist of lime for Tess. “Are you ready to order?” he asked in the requisite obscure European accent used by all waiters at Ed’s various restaurants.

“You go ahead,” I said. “I’ll decide by the time he gets round to me.”

“Madame?”

“A small Caesar salad, please, and the petite filet wrapped in bacon, rare.”