Talk:Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary

message: The KT boundary is either a) a moment in time straddling the Mesozoic and Cenozoic 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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 , 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)
thread_title: Page title (2007)

message: At present this article reads a bit odd to the general reader.
#Intro
##For us non-geologists, what is a "geological signature"?
##"a thin band" — a thin band of what?
##"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.
#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?
#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.
#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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: Well, I know I'm late to the party, but I only encountered the phrase "Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event" and abbreviation "Pg" for the first time yesterday, whilst researching some sedimentary basins on the Geoscience Australia website.  Clearly, I'm no geologist! ;-)  OK, so the "Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event" is the old "Cretaceous–Tertiary"or "K-T" extinction event; of course, any active field revises its terminology as needs and understanding changes.  But one thing confuses me: why are there two separate articles at all?  I assumed that the geological boundary would have the same name and would be described in the same article as its major evidence ...!  As a "general reader" (my scientific specialty, if any, is physics), I don't see the need for Wikipedia articles to fuss over the boundaries between scientific disciplines.  My guess is that one article represents the POV of geology, the other that of evolutionary biology.  Given the large amount of content duplication, the two articles together are much less informative - and more work to read - than they could be if rolled back into one coherent story.  IMO, one article would serve the Wikipedia audience better than two.  yoyo (talk) 00:18, 2 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggestions for improving this and the other article 

message: 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)
thread_title: Fixed error

message: James F. (talk) 21:28, 16 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  In Our Time programme about this 

message: Since the old name of Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event has been changed to the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, or K-Pg, shouldn't this article be renamed to the K-Pg boundary?  I know that K-Pg boundary redirects here, but the names should be consistent with the extinction event.  I have no clue how to rename an article over a redirect, so I'm hoping that someone watching this article and knows how to do it can make it happen.  SkepticalRaptor (talk) 21:55, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Article name (2012)

message: This page still makes reference to 65.5 million years ago, but the International Commission on Stratigraphy has determined that the Cretaceous terminates instead at 66 million years ago ( as can be seen in this picture http://stratigraphy.org/ICSchart/ChronostratChart2013-01.jpg). I'm unsure of the most delicate way to fix these references in the article. Gruekiller (talk) 07:11, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Age of the K-Pg Boundary

message: Reading this article today was the first time in my life that I've ever heard of the name change to Cretaceous-Paleogene. Having been impressively more obsessed with dinosaurs as a child than your average 6 year old boy, I'm a little a disconcerted that I missed this important change in nomenclature. I'm even more disconcerted that there is absolutely no time spent in this article, nor in other related K-T/K-Pg articles, on when and why the name was changed. If someone is aware of this information, it should definitely be included in this article. ---Puff (talk) 18:09, 10 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See Tertiary - second sentence and first four refs. Vsmith (talk) 01:41, 11 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I appreciate the link. I have now seen Tertiary and that article does no more to explain the reason for the change than any of these others, nor does it or the references provide a date. The only new information this article provides is that it was the International Commission on Stratigraphy that made the change. I suppose when I have time (which is never) I can try digging through ICS archives to try and find the information I'm looking for.---Puff (talk) 20:07, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

text: Obviously, older sources and slower sources will not have caught up to the name change. The Tertiary period was split up into the Paleocene and Neogene periods by the ICS a number of years ago, so "T"/"Tertiary" is no longer a recognized term. See  , though note that this article is itself out of date as the ICS was successfully petitioned to keep the Quaternary around. Dinoguy2 (talk) 18:05, 7 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: The page you link to says, "It will probably be a long time (if ever) before the extinction of the dinosaurs at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (or KT) boundary becomes associated with the "Cretaceous-Paleogene (or KPg) boundary"." IUGS (which includes ICS) dropped the Tertiary period from its time scales back in 1989. So what changed recently? The ICS recommended that geologists stop using the term in 2005. The ICS is entitled to its opinion, but it is not like they have jurisdiction. The U.S. Geological Survey, as well as the German and French mapping authorities, still use "Tertiary." The USGS time scale is here. ("Although the Tertiary is not recognized by many international time scales, the GNC agrees that it is important that it be recognized as a system/period.") H. Humbert (talk) 03:26, 8 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Name change:  K-T to K-Pg? (2015) 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Would be nice to show the geologic timescale such as appears at the top of the Cretaceous infobox.  Maybe just a bit of the template "Infobox rockunit" which uses template "Geological range"?  I'm not familiar enough with infoboxes to try this myself.  Cheers, Facts707 (talk) 13:42, 25 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Show geologic timescale? 

message: "A seismically induced onshore surge deposit at the KPg boundary, North Dakota"
The paper is up: https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/03/27/1817407116
This is the one that has been all over the news because it supposedly shows fossils of fish killed directly by tektite fallout from the Chicxulub impact.  There is a doi but it doesn't work yet. 67.164.113.165 (talk) 22:00, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  De Palma et al paper 

message: This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Moneytrees🏝️Talk🌴Help out at CCI!  03:48, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible copyright problem 

message: This article fails to define what the kt boundary actually is. IMO, it should start with a proper definition. It begins by mentioning it is high in iridium but this is a feature not a definition. The Wikipedia Article on the cretaceous period mentions it was "first defined by Belgian geologist Jean d'Omalius d'Halloy in 1822 as the Terrain Crétacé, using strata in the Paris Basin" afaik, The technology to analyse stratigraphic iridium did not exist in 1822 so  presumably there is a stratigraphic definition of the kt boundary with an associated gssp. Marek1975 (talk) 08:14, 2 June 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition