The real story of nuclear winter and the dinosaurs’ demise

Originally published 1 April 1991

Rumors have been fly­ing that pale­on­tol­o­gist Robert (Ace) Hayprel has found dinosaur fos­sils that will rev­o­lu­tion­ize our views about how those crea­tures became extinct 65 mil­lion years ago.

Hayprel is an icon­o­clas­tic bone-dig­ger from the Uni­ver­si­ty of South­ern Mon­tana who sev­er­al times before has rat­tled estab­lished views about dinosaurs. It was Hayprel, for instance, who uncov­ered evi­dence that the sup­pos­ed­ly fero­cious Tyran­nosaurus rex was actu­al­ly a gen­tle, fun-lov­ing her­bi­vore that just hap­pened to have an ugly mug.

I gave Hayprel a call at the uni­ver­si­ty. He kind­ly con­sent­ed to a tele­phone inter­view. I put the ques­tion to him straight: “I take it you reject the the­o­ry that dinosaurs were wiped out when an aster­oid col­lid­ed with the Earth?”

“Hog­wash!” snapped Hayprel. “The dinosaurs were no more blast­ed by an aster­oid than I was. Vol­canic erup­tions did­n’t fin­ish them off either. The dinosaurs blew them­selves out of existence.”

“You mean…”

“Exact­ly! A nuclear holo­caust. Bombs away. They blew them­selves to king­dom come, and a lot of oth­er species with ’em.”

“But that implies that dinosaurs were…”

“Intel­li­gent? You bet. Civ­i­lized too, if you can call a crea­ture that blows itself up intel­li­gent or civ­i­lized. And I can prove it.”

“How?”

“Fos­sils, of course.”

“Would you care to fill me in.”

“You’ve undoubt­ed­ly heard about Stenony­chosaurus, a small dinosaur that lived near the end of the Cre­ta­ceous peri­od of geo­log­ic his­to­ry, just before the final dinosaur extinc­tions? Since the 1960s we’ve known that Stenony­chosaurus had oppos­able hand dig­its and bipedal pos­ture. And a fair sized brain, too. Many attrib­ut­es, in fact, not unlike our humanoid ances­tors of only a few mil­lion years ago. Lots of peo­ple have sug­gest­ed that Stenony­chosaurus might have achieved true intel­li­gence if the dinosaurs had­n’t become extinct. Well, I’m here to tell you that it happened.

“And that’s where the new fos­sils come in?”

“You’ve got it. Quite remark­able fos­sils, from direct­ly below the Cre­ta­ceous-Ter­tiary bound­ary clay…”

“You’re refer­ring to the world­wide lay­er of clay and soot in the rock stra­ta that defines the end of the Cre­ta­ceous peri­od and the begin­ning of the Ter­tiary, sup­pos­ed­ly deposit­ed by an aster­oid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs?”

“Yep. My fos­sils are from mud­stones even more fine-grained than the famous Ger­man lime­stones that show every feath­er of Archeopteryx, the first bird. What I’m see­ing are incred­i­bly detailed fos­sils — includ­ing skin impres­sions! — of an ani­mal not unlike Stenony­chosaurus, but with a great­ly enlarged cra­nial capac­i­ty. And brain size is not the only rea­son I know this new species was intelligent.”

“What else?”

“Pock­ets! This dinosaur had evolved pock­ets in its skin. Now you tell me what sur­vival val­ue pock­ets would have to an unin­tel­li­gent creature.”

“Kan­ga­roos and oth­er mar­su­pi­als have pouch­es for car­ry­ing their imma­ture young, and they have noth­ing like human lev­els of intelligence.”

“Ha! But dinosaurs were egg-lay­ers, so no need for repro­duc­tive pouch­es. Besides, my dinosaur pock­ets are pre­cise­ly placed in the dinosaur’s hide to be acces­si­ble to the fore extrem­i­ties. I’ve made the mea­sure­ments and cal­cu­la­tions. Per­fect for car keys, lip­sticks, loose change. I call the new species Sac­cu­lusaurus; that’s Latin, more or less, for “pock­et-lizard.”

“But if dinosaurs reached our lev­el of intel­li­gence and civ­i­liza­tion, then how come we haven’t found more evi­dence buried in the rocks? Cities? Highways?”

“A rea­son­able ques­tion. But remem­ber, humans have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly mod­i­fy­ing the envi­ron­ment for only a few thou­sand years — a blink of an eye in geo­log­ic time — and when you look at the whole plan­et, only a tiny frac­tion of its sur­face is cov­ered by human arti­facts. The chance of find­ing rem­nants of dinosaur civ­i­liza­tion is about the same as open­ing the Ency­clo­pe­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca at ran­dom and hit­ting the page for — Oh, you get the idea. I was damn lucky to find a few individuals.”

“And the dinosaur extinctions?”

“It’s all there in the stra­tum of clay that marks the Cre­ta­ceous-Ter­tiary bound­ary. You’ve heard about the irid­i­um, an ele­ment that’s abun­dant in the bound­ary clay but rare else­where on the sur­face of the Earth? Yes, I’ll admit that irid­i­um is com­mon in mete­orites, but it’s also a fall­out prod­uct of plu­to­ni­um bombs. I say the clay is com­posed of dust blast­ed into the atmos­phere by a nuclear war. And the soot is from war-ignit­ed fires. All of that stuff set­tled onto the sur­face of the Earth, along with the irid­i­um, and in a few places those deposits have been pre­served for our inspection.

“Incred­i­ble!”

“It’s the nuclear win­ter sce­nario, exact­ly! Sac­cu­lusaurus was intel­li­gent enough to build bombs, but not bright enough to refrain from using them. A lit­tle intraspecies strife. Ka-blooey! No Sac­cu­lusaurus. No dinosaurs. No…”

“What next?”

“We’ve got to find more places where the Cre­ta­ceous-Ter­tiary bound­ary is revealed in the stra­ta. Soon­er or lat­er, just below the clay, soot, and irid­i­um we’ll find the smok­ing gun, the unmis­tak­able fos­sil arti­fact of intel­li­gent civ­i­liza­tion. Per­haps a Sac­cu­lusaurus vehi­cle, or a dwelling. Or a Sac­cu­lusaurus with some­thing in its pock­ets, the dinosaur equiv­a­lent of a Swiss Army knife, per­haps, or bus fare. I’ve just scratched the sur­face. My dis­cov­ery is just the begin­ning. Soon, Sac­cu­lusaurus will be a house­hold word.”

Hayprel fools him­self if he expects quick accep­tance for his the­o­ry of the dinosaur extinc­tions. Nev­er­the­less, his remark­ably-detailed “pock­et-lizard” fos­sils are con­vinc­ing evi­dence of the per­ils of intelligence.

---

This essay was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished on April Fools’ Day, 1991. ‑Ed.