Abstract
The April 2021 Back Scatter, “Iridium marks the spot” (page 64), should have given credit to Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, and their team, who proposed the hypothesis that an asteroid impact caused the mass extinction event 66 million years ago, and cited their publication.11. L. W. Alvarez et al., Science 208, 1095 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.208.4448.1095I was present at conferences where the Alvarez team was ridiculed and insulted because a physicist (Luis Alvarez) dared to intrude on geologists’ turf. The team did meticulous research and global checking of the iridium anomaly at the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) boundary (or Cretaceous–Tertiary boundary, as it was known in the 1980s). I am glad that that careful work has been independently verified many times over. But the work mentioned in the Back Scatter is not new news, just further confirmation. Please give credit where it is due.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<1. L. W. Alvarez et al., Science 208, 1095 (1980). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.208.4448.1095, Google ScholarCrossref© 2021 American Institute of Physics.
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