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The Asteroid-in-Spring Hypothesis

It took ten days for two researchers to turn on each other, each claiming to have found new evidence of when the asteroid hit Earth.

He had been trying to share the news about it for a decade, but the attitude, according to Penfield, was “This kid doesn’t even have a doctorate” and it’s “not worth talking to some oil guy.” He spent a considerable amount of time, he told me, depressed that no one would hear him, not even a mediocre geologist whose reputation hinged on this very information. While a grad student at the University of Kansas, DePalma led a research team that unearthed what he called Dakota-raptor, a 17-foot flightless winged carnivore he described to TheGuardian as “the Ferrari of competitors” and “the most lethal animal you can possibly imagine into the paleoecology of that time period.” In the pictures he provided to the paper he wears a suit vest and holds a shovel like a 19th-century showman. It became clear during our time together that DePalma is beloved in Bowman; a husky-voiced, cigarette-slim worker -stocking shelves at the gas-station convenience store hugged him the moment we walked in (“A fascinating woman,” he called her), and the mohawked, lip-ringed chef who ran one of the only two restaurants open in town on Monday nights did the same.

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