By Azariah Blaubach
Would you believe us if we said you can see the dust layer left behind on Goat Hill from the asteroid that made the dinosaurs go extinct? Only a few places around the world have an exposed iridium layer or KT Boundary, and one is located 10 minutes from downtown on the Old Raton Pass.
This is the perfect outdoor recreational activity for those interested in geological history.
An iridium layer marks the period of the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) Boundary, which is a geologic time characterized by a mass extinction of many forms of life including the dinosaurs. Iridium is found rarely in the earth's crust; it is more likely to be found in asteroids.
Luiz Alvarez, an American physicist, hypothesized and set out to prove that an asteroid impact created an iridium layer in the earth's crust. However, K-PG sites have been found in marine sedimentary rock, so there is a possibility it could have come from the ocean where iridium concentrations are higher.
This then led Chuck Pillmore, Charles Orth, and other scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory to search for boundaries relating to this event in non-marine rock. Pillmore's familiarity with Raton led to find not just one iridium layer, but two located in the area, further verifying the extraterrestrial origin of the iridium anomaly. The Mexican Chiculub Crater corroborated the hypothesis and further supported the belief that a meteor impact killed the dinosaurs.
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