Colorado Springs – “Hey, are you guys the ones looking for space dust?” Richard Blatter, 69, called out breathlessly as he hiked the short, steep path from the side of Interstate 25 to Pulpit Rock, just north of Colorado Springs.
Yes, the scientists on the slope admitted, they were searching – but not for dust.
The team from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science was looking for elusive signs of an asteroid that smashed into Earth 65.5 million years ago, triggering fires, massive soot clouds and other changes that probably helped drive dinosaurs to extinction.
That transition between the dinosaur-rich Cretaceous period, before the asteroid hit, and the Tertiary period, after, is known as the K-T boundary.
The asteroid, about 5 miles in diameter, slammed down near Mexico, said Kirk Johnson, chief curator of the museum, and researchers have found evidence of the massive event here and there around the world, including in Colorado s Eastern Plains.
Now, they re searching for the K-T boundary up against the foothills in Colorado Springs, hoping to better understand the complicated geology of the region and why fossil, rock-composition and magnetic data seem to tell different stories.
We re going back to first principles and digging holes, said Johnson, wearing a white bandanna around his neck and a brimmed hat in the brilliant sun.
Monday afternoon, Johnson pointed 50 feet above him at the stainless white cliffs that form Pulpit Rock, at the center of a Colorado Springs city park.
The K-T boundary is either in that sandstone or above it, Johnson said, before smashing a pickax into a crumbly layer of dark rock, where he searched for fossils that might reveal the age of the ancient sediments.
Oops, watch out! he called to a colleague a few feet below, as rock tumbled down the steep slope.
Right now, the researchers are working below the suspected K-T boundary in rocks laid down in the late Cretaceous.
While fossils there may help narrow the search for the actual boundary, the definitive evidence will be the microscopic presence of the chemical iridium and tiny grains of quartz that had their shape changed by the massive force of an asteroid strike, Johnson said.
Scott Wing, chairman of the paleontology department at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, tagged along for part of Monday s excavations.
Times of change in geological history are not only fascinating, he said, but they re important for people to understand, now that we re changing the planet in profound, new ways.
Blatter, who lives behind Pulpit Rock, said he hikes the area daily and has been eager to run into the scientists involved in the project.
I m curious, he said. It s just interesting to try to figure out the puzzle.
Staff writer Katy Human can be reached at 303-820-1910 or khuman@denverpost.com.
