The National Portrait Gallery recently acquired a portrait of Walter Alvarez done in copper and depicting the iridium layer at the K-T boundary and the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 🧪
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My favorite bit of K-T boundary trivia is that science-fiction author and dinosaur enthusiast Donald F. Glut once played in a musical group called The Iridium Band.
He gets too much credit for this discovery.
His original article was published in Science, the same year that Dutch geologist Jan Smit published his PhD thesis, arriving at the same conclusion from a different field study.
Walter and Jan worked together later. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smit_(paleontologist)
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His original article was published in Science, the same year that Dutch geologist Jan Smit published his PhD thesis, arriving at the same conclusion from a different field study.
Walter and Jan worked together later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Smit_(paleontologist)
It sends you down the rabbit hole (thanks @wikipedia.org) to read about:
Walter Alvarez: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Alvarez
K-T boundary : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_boundary
Iridium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium
Dinosaur killing Asteroid: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2024/august/dinosaur-killing-chicxulub-asteroid-came-from-edge-solar-system.html