Agreed, he played his cards right.
That K-T layer (Cretaceous–Tertiary) or boundary, now known as the K-Pg (Cretaceous–Paleogene) boundary. is actually visible on the surface in many places around the world. This is true especially in the southwest US, near where the Chicxulub meteor crater in the Yucatan Peninsula was found by oil well drilling.
https://eatvolution.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/conglomerated-chicxulub-crater.jpgThere's even a geocaching site in Colorado... this site gives a pretty good description of the events surrounding the formation of the layer, often called "The Iridium layer" due to the unusually high concentration of iridium from the meteor itself.
https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC1G447_k-t-boundary-layer-longs-canyon-siteI understand there's a place not very far east of Denver where the layer is visible on some farmer's property.
I also understand that scientists argued for a long time as to whether the Chicxulub event or a sequence of powerful volcanic eruptions in the European continent around the same time caused the extinction event, or both. I think the United Nations finally decided it was the Chicxulub event that dood the dirty deed.
It has been speculated that if it were not for that mass extinction, which eliminated most of the predators of the time, that proto-human beings would not have had a chance to evolve into the dominant species.
Highly interesting search engine references abound regarding the iridium layer and the Chicxulub event. Incidentally, quite a few now-invisible meteor craters have been found by geological surveys done for oil well explorations and visible ones have been found by people just browsing around in satellite views of the earth.
Terrynosaurus, 230RN
Chicxulub. I pronounce it "Chick zoo lube" to make life easier.
