Talk:K–T boundary

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Earth sciences Portal
K–T boundary is part of WikiProject Geology, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use geology resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.
Start This article has been rated as Start-class on the quality scale.
High This article has been rated as high-importance on the importance scale.

[edit] Page title

The KT boundary is either a) a moment in time straddling the Mesozoic and Cainozoic eras; b) a sequence of rocks covering that period. The content of this article is rather loosely defined, but it isn't really either of those. OM, can you explain what you mean by this comment: "The extinction is separated from geological activity."? Would a better title perhaps be "Geological signature of the K-T boundary", or similar? Badgerpatrol 23:05, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

But isn't the KT boundary a geological signature? The reasons I want to rename it is that if you look back at the links in other articles, it's getting confusing what article is referring to what. I think we should keep K-T boundary a strictly (or close to strictly) geological article, whereas the K-T extinction event more biological, with some overlap. I don't know what would be a good title--Geological events at the K-T boundary? Not sure. OrangeMarlin Talk• Contributions 23:13, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Well...it is and it isn't. Technically the "KT boundary" is a specific junction between sedimentary layers at a section near El Kef, a town in Tunisia [1], and by analogy similar sections worldwide. More abstractly, it's a moment in time. I think the reason I have a bit of a problem with the title is that the actual article content mixes up process and observation- i.e. geological causation (impacts, sea level change) with geological observations (craters, shocked quartz, coarsening-upward sequences etc.) and doesn't necessarily match the page name. Reading the title, my expectation would be to find a discussion of the sedimentology and stratigraphy of the boundary layers, locations of sections worldwide, a discussion of the stratotype and geochronology...i.e. an altogether dryer and more boring article about geology.... The stuff about impacts etc could be better placed elsewhere (albeit the impact signature should definitely be mentioned extensively as a very important feature of boundary sediments). I suggest we re-write the article to suit the title in fact, rather than changing the title to suit the article- what do you think? Badgerpatrol 00:39, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestions for improving this and the other article

At present this article reads a bit odd to the general reader.

  1. Intro
    1. For us non-geologists, what is a "geological signature"?
    2. "a thin band" — a thin band of what?
    3. "The boundary marks the end of the Mesozoic Era, and the beginning of the Cenozoic Era." This sentence needs something more to turn it into a geol statement rather than a chron statement.
  2. Sections — apart from the footnotes appendix, the article has only one section, albeit with subsections. A substantial article with only one section is kinda weird. Could its subsections be raised to top-level sections?
  3. From the 4th paragraph of the Alvarez subsection, the article starts talking about "the extinction" as though the reader already knows about it. Before referring to the extinction in this way, the article needs to explain in summary what the extinction is. And it should link to the full article on the extinction event.
  4. A lot of the content is duplicated in the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event article. It is poor organisation to duplicate info in detail in 2 related articles. The extinction event article should concentrate on the extinction and cover the geol info in summarised form only. Likewise this article should concentrate on the geol (as it does) but cover the extinction in summary, as per previous point. Nurg (talk) 09:52, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
This material was cut out of Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event which explains the duplication and some of the other issues you raise. Really, this is talking about extinction mechanisms which are co-incident with, but not the same as, the KT boundary. It would perhaps be better to talk about the actual geology (available sections, sedimentology, stratigraphy, preservation, reworking). The KT boundary (as I state above) is either a) a moment in time (notable only for the extinction and thus covered in that article) or b) a collection of rock strata (boundary clay, fireball layer, etc etc) exposed either sub-aerially or in found in deep sea cores. Currently, the article doesn't really talk about either of those. Before the inevitable ruckus kicks off with anyone, that's not a criticism, it's an observation. Badgerpatrol (talk) 12:35, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fixed error

I've slightly altered the formatting of the initial quoted date in the first line because it seemed to be giving me a recurrent error (see page hist) that I couldn't fix. If anybody knows the problem, please change it back to however you wish. Badgerpatrol (talk) 12:28, 7 May 2008 (UTC)