Professor Trevor Palmer in SIS C&C Workshop 1987:1 pages 3-4 … wrote on what was then the new idea of an impact in the Cretaceous period, having been aired by the Alvarez team in the mid 980s, namely the discovery of an iridium abundance anomaly at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, 65 million years ago. Shocked quartz grains found by a US Geological Survey team appeared to represent conclusive evidence, he suggests. However, resistance to the idea was formed by other geologists, such as Charles Officer and Charles Drake. They accepted that the shocked grains as an anomaly but assigned them to volcanic activity forcing internal [from inside the Earth] process – as opposed to over process [origin in a space rock smack]. They envisaged a period of volcanic activity from between 10,000 and 100,000 years. Jan Smit, a geologist in California, concluded from a study of samples from ocean floor and drill cores, as well as land based research, that the C/T boundary was worldwide [Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 1985]. They also found tektites – or micro tektites, close to the iridium anomaly. Another group of authors found a sooty layer – evidence, it was thought of wild fires [with a global distribution]. Hence, it is also clear, from some of the sources cited , that uniformitarian dating of sedimentary rocks both sides of the iridium anomaly were problematic. Offering the main case for detractors to latch onto.
