Product Description
Sixty-five million years ago a gigantic comet or asteroid as big as Mount Everest slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula, creating an explosion on impact equivalent to the detonation of a hundred million hydrogen bombs. It produced a cloud of roiling debris that blackened the sky for months as well as other geologic disasters--and triggered the demise of Tyrannosaurus rex.

We know what happened largely 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 dinosaurs' extinction. Painstakingly assembling clues from the Italian Apennines and the depths of the Pacific and presenting them with the excitement of a great novel, T. rex and the Crater of Doom is a book of undeniable importance and irresistible appeal by a major figure in contemporary science.

"Engaging and witty. Read Alvarez for and excellent account of how scientists pose questions and seek to solve them."--Scientific American

"First-rate...Alvarez provides the up-close tale of the comet or asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs."--San Francisco Chronicle

Amazon.com Review
One of the great mysteries is what happened to the dinosaurs, and it has taken great detective work to give us an answer. In T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, some brilliant, not to mention determined, scientists roam the world and seek out the clues. What they conclude is that the earth withstood a colossal impact with a meteor (or perhaps a comet) 65 million years ago. The resulting cataclysm destroyed half the life on the planet.

Walter Alvarez, a geologist at the University of California at Berkeley, and one of the four scientists who present this theory on the mystery, tells the story in a clear narrative that contains a wealth of scientific material. The book does require an investment of attention, but the presentation is quite readable, and the story itself is fascinating.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 36 reviews)

Yucatan

This book started off a little slow, because it covered a number of elementary topics, but then it got really exciting and delivered everything I was hoping for: a sense of the excitement of discovery, and a blow by blow account of the asteroid/dinosaur extinction hypothesis. The high point was undoubtedly the discovery of the outcrop in Mexico with the spherules and petrified wood.
December 03, 2007

Fabulous

Don't know what else to say. If you like geology, science, natural history, dinosaurs,... any of the above? Read it!
May 03, 2007

Fascinating

Great account of the evolution of the meteor impact theory of mass extinction. He provides a detailed account of the scientific processes involved in the discovery of the Chixulub crater and its relation to the end of the Cretaceous period. As a scientist in another field, I found it to be very informative for the lay reader (non-paleontologist/geologist, etc.).
August 25, 2006

This subject isn't written in stone - yet

I started reading Vincent Courtillot's Evolutionary Catastrophes (volcanism) first in order to gain a handle on the mass extinction argument and found that this book challenges Walter Alvarez's book T. Rex And The Crater of Doom (comet or asteroid bombardment). Therefore, I started reading that at the same time; which got me to pull out and start skimming David Levy's Impact Jupiter (comet expert). In the meantime, I thought it prudent to start reading The Behavior of the Earth by Claude Allegre (plate tectonics), and picked up Steven Stanley's book Extinction (global climate change). Recently I saw via a Google search that Linda Elkins-Tanton now thinks that perhaps meteorite bombardment could have allowed hot magma to vent thus causing global climate change and hence the mass extinctions. This is fun!
April 25, 2006

This is the one that started it all...

This is the book that started it all: Dinosaur extinction by bolide from outer space. Catastrophic tsunamis. Intercontinental ejecta layer. Geologic evidence everywhere you look once you know where to look. And the laughingstock of serious geologists everywhere until the evidence started mounting up to where it couldn't be ignored.

This is the story of Walter Alvarez and his colleagues and their careful science that yielded ideas, insights, and then, whammo! the Big Idea that there might be an external component to the extinction of dinosaurs 65 million years ago. It is a forensic mystery worthy of "CSI" except this is the real deal, and the slog work of doing research took this band of scientists all over the world in search of enlightenment. Leveraging new developments in dating techniques and the best minds in the field and out of it (did I mention that Walter Alvarez is the son of Luis Alvarez, the Nobel Award winner for physics?), the adventure is somewhat stalled until the discovery of oil company drilling cores from the Chixulub region of Mexico that confirm evidence of an impact in that region. It is an eleventh-hour discovery just as interest is waning and funding is running out - a development worthy of the "Nova" episode that it eventually became.

As much fun as it is to read mysteries, it is equally fun to read about the real-life trials and tribulations of a band of intrepid individuals who have a hypothesis and then are able to methodically test it, with startling results. One of the joys of this book is Alvarez's generosity toward those whose work supported him and propelled him forward, as well as his occasional head-scratching humility. This really isn't a vanity piece but it is a definite good read.
December 01, 2005

SIMILAR PRODUCTS

Maps of Time: An Introduction to Big History (California World History Library)
by David Christian
by William H. McNeill

Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (Global Century Series)
by J. R. McNeill, John Robert McNeill, Paul Kennedy

The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
by CK Prahalad

Beyond Engineering: How Society Shapes Technology (Sloan Technology Series)
by Robert Pool

Global Environmental Governance: Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Studies (Foundations of Contemporary Environmental Studies Series)
by James Gustave Speth, Peter Haas