Alvarez hypothesis

Cultural  

1. The theory that the mass extinction that involved the dinosaurs and many other living things was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth sixty-five million years ago.

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The hypothesis is named after the father-and-son team of scientists Luis and Walter Alvarez, who first suggested it.

Evidence indicates that the asteroid fell in the Yucatan peninsula.

Example Sentences

While some scientists quickly accepted the “Alvarez hypothesis,” as it came to be called, others dismissed it as “codswallop.”

From Salon

The Alvarez hypothesis was referenced in the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park," and just five years after that the movies "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," both about an asteroid heading toward Earth, were released.

From Salon

Thanks to these finds—and the discovery of a huge, 180-kilometer-wide crater in Chicxulub, Mexico, that is believed to be the mark of the K-T killer—most scientists now accept the Alvarez hypothesis.

From Science Magazine

If he finds the mineral clues below the fossil deposits, he says, the impact probably preceded and could have caused the extinction, thus strengthening the Alvarez hypothesis.

From Time Magazine Archive

He and his co-workers had simply hoped to elaborate on the Alvarez hypothesis by detecting trace amounts of rare noble gases, like neon and xenon, in the layer of Cretaceous clay deposited during roughly the same period that the dinosaurs became extinct.

From Time Magazine Archive