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Saturday, March 2, 2013

Enabling Jogu the Drunk and Pets! | Tome of the Ancient

staremore OMG Cat! You?re going to stare a hole through Brad Rhodes! Stop it, it?s embarrassing! Yes, she?s been trying to come up with 10 days of Pet Battles?but keeps getting side-tracked by well ? things. She?s been having a moral dilemma over Jogu the Drunk. Buy A Fish A Drink? Buy A Fish A Keg? She really feels she should stop contributing to his problem, but darn the pays too good.

She couldn?t wait to get her Onyx Cloud Serpent to ride but now finds it makes her nauseous when she rides it, so she just mounts it and kinda stands there ? looking cool. Or not. Who knows. Okay, enough. Let?s get down to business.

Oh wait, just one more thing.

moruk I wonder if anyone else has had this happen. Moruk is sweet on Cat apparently. He gives her a Flawless Battle-stone of some kind VERY frequently, so frequently that I think he?s going to get in trouble with the RNG Department. Oh and that Courageous Yon NEVER gives her anything. Perhaps he?s heard what a slacker she was at helping out the Shado-Pan.

Okay now I?m REALLY ready. I?m doing it all at once to make it look like I have a lot to say.

Day 1: ?Your first day pet battling.

I vaguely remember I seemed to think PvP battles were what you were supposed to do. I can?t remember all my team except for Clockwork Gnome. I proudly entered the ring with no concept of which pets worked best against other pet types with three level ones expecting to meet three other level ones.

My team was beaten to a pulp repeatedly by a variety of teams consisting of a level range between 1 to 7. My Clockwork Gnome was annihilated by a Elemental. My learning began. We were hammered by a Pandaren. Perhaps we should do some reading and come back when we have a level 25 team and that was day one.

Day 2:? What pets don?t you like and why?

Bugs and Beetles and Roaches. Ugh. I don?t even care if they kick butt I?m not using them. Ick! Ick! Ick!

Day 3:? Who is your favourite pet?? If you could bring it out into the real world, tell me what you imagine you would be doing.

I know I said if I ever got a Minfernal I would beat it to death for playing that hard to get, but I found once I HAD one it was love at first sight. I didn?t care that he was common. Then Navi made him a rare with her Battle-Stone and I loved him EVEN MORE!

In the real world? I guess I?d take him with us on our dog walks to impress the neighbors. You think he?s rare in Azeroth? That?s nothing to how he?d stand out here! We?d be the talk of the neighborhood, not sure in a good way though. I?m afraid he might do some lawn-scorching along the way.

Day 4: What was the most epic pet battle/capture you ever had?

I GOT A MINFERNAL!!!!! YAY! YAY!

Day 5: What pet do you want more than any other pet?? What would you do to get it?

MINFERNAL! LOL! I transferred to a magic PvP server to obtain him.

Day 6: What pets have you got in your favourite team(s)?

This one?s hard as it changes all the time and pets go in and out of favor and the teams change all the time and I have so many.

petteams I like some of my Dragonkin with heals a lot as they?re good utility players but I STILL haven?t perfected my perfect team.

Day 7: Do you use mods?? If you could only have one pet mod, what would it be and why?

I use quite a few but the one I couldn?t do without is PetBattle Teams. Best thing ever.

Day 8: What is the stupidest thing(s) you have ever done in a pet battle?

I wish I could say there was a stupid thing I did once. But I can?t. I REPEATEDLY do this. I forget to check to make sure my team is healed up from the last battle and engage to find one dead, one at half health. This used to be painful as I had to waste a bandage. Now since bandages have multiplied like rabbits it?s not such an issue, but still! Stop doing it!

Day 9: What is your favourite pet ability?? If you could have a pet with your favourite abilities, what would they be?

Right now it?s Tranquil Mechanical Yeti?s Ion Cannon!

Oh, I?d do something stupid like a great heal, stone rush without the damage to my pet and ION CANNON! Oh, and maybe make the cooldown on Ion Cannon shorter too.

Day 10: Design a pet!? What model would your pet have, where would it come from and what abilities would it have?

dog8 This is my pet. He comes from the?seventh level of hell and I would steal his ability from the Hozen Idol and it would work on critters AND Elementals!

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This entry was posted on March 1, 2013 at 11:11 am and is filed under General WoW with tags pet battles, World of Warcraft, wow. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Source: http://tomeoftheancient.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/enabling-jogu-the-drunk-and-pets/

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Ex-Haiti dictator 'Baby Doc' Duvalier faces charges

Swoan Parker / Reuters

Former Haitian Dictator Jean Claude "Baby-Doc" Duvalier, center, listens as charges against him are announced during an appeals court hearing in Port-au-Prince on Thursday. Duvalier appeared in court on Thursday for the first time to face charges he was responsible for corruption and serious human rights violations during his 15-year rule.

By Jean Valme, Reuters

PORT-AU-PRINCE ? Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier faced corruption and human rights charges in a court on Thursday for the first time since a popular revolt forced him into exile in 1986, and denied responsibility for abuses under his 15-year rule.

Individual government officials "had their own authority," the 61-year-old Duvalier said when asked about his role as head of state from 1971 to 1986. "Under my authority, children could go to school, there was no insecurity."

Duvalier, who had boycotted three previous court hearings, struck a mostly defiant tone during a four-hour grilling by a panel of three judges in a packed and sweltering courtroom.

After his last no-show a week ago, Judge Jean-Joseph Lebrun issued a warrant ordering his presence, under police escort if necessary.?

Duvalier, dressed in a navy-blue suit and tie, slipped into the courthouse unescorted early on Thursday, arriving in his own car several hours before the hearing started accompanied by his longtime companion Veronique Roy.?

'Long live Duvalier'
Hundreds of Duvalier supporters gathered outside the courthouse soon after his arrival, some dancing and chanting "Long live Duvalier."

The pretrial Appeal Court hearing was held to determine what charges Duvalier may have to face. It is the first time he has personally been required to address crimes allegedly committed during his rule.?

International human rights observers are closely watching the case and consider it an important test of Haiti's weak justice system after decades of dictatorship, military rule and economic mayhem.

"Whatever happens next, Haitians will remember the image of their former dictator having to answer questions about the repression carried out under his rule," said Reed Brody, a spokesman for Human Rights Watch.?

During the hearing Duvalier was asked by the judges about more than a dozen of the most notorious cases involving alleged extra-judicial killings and detention of political prisoners.

'Calm, almost indifferent'
"He was asked tough questions and his answers were mostly evasive," said Amanda Klasing, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who attended the hearing.

"He was very calm, almost indifferent. His facial expression didn't change at all," she said.

Several alleged victims were in court and expressed satisfaction that he had finally appeared.

"He will have to face history in court, just like other dictators around the world are facing," said Alix Fils-Aime, who was imprisoned by Duvalier's government.

The hearing was adjourned in the afternoon and is set to resume next Thursday.

Reynold Georges, who heads Duvalier's legal team, had argued unsuccessfully at a hearing last week that his client's presence in court was not required.

Duvalier was briefly detained on charges of corruption, theft and misappropriation of funds after returning to the impoverished Caribbean nation in January 2011 following a 25-year exile in France. Those charges are still pending.

Separate charges of crimes against humanity filed by alleged victims of wrongful imprisonment, forced disappearances and torture under Duvalier, were set aside by a judge last year because the statute of limitations had run out.?

But the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, has warned Haitian authorities that there is no statute of limitations under international law for serious violations of human rights.

Return from exile
Critics say prosecutors have been too lenient in Duvalier's case. President Michel Martelly's government recently renewed Duvalier's diplomatic passport, saying he was entitled to it as a former head of state.

Duvalier, who inherited the title "President For Life" at the age of 19, is alleged to have fled Haiti with more than $100 million stashed in European bank accounts in 1986 after street demonstrations and riots broke out in a number of cities.?

His departure ended nearly three decades of dictatorship begun by his father, Fran?ois "Papa Doc" Duvalier, in 1957.?

The Duvaliers enforced their rule with the aid of a feared militia, the National Security Volunteers, better known as the "Tonton Macoutes," who were blamed for hundreds of deaths and disappearances.?

Soon after he returned to Haiti in 2011, taking up residence in a villa in a posh suburb in the hills above the capital Port-au-Prince, Duvalier issued a brief apology "to those countrymen who rightly feel they were victims of my government," the first public recognition of abuses under his rule.?

While in exile, Duvalier acknowledged privately that killers in his government went unpunished, according to Bernard Diederich, a New Zealand-born journalist and author of several books on Haiti, including a biography of the younger Duvalier.?

"He always passed the blame to others," said Diederich, who conducted four long interviews with Duvalier in the late 1990s.

Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/28/17136615-ex-haiti-dictator-baby-doc-duvalier-faces-corruption-charges-for-first-time-since-revolt?lite

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Zack Greinke hit hard in 2nd start for Dodgers

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP) ? Zack Greinke's rocky outing hardly raised an eyebrow at Dodgers camp.

Greinke was hit hard in his second spring training start, allowing three doubles and a triple over three innings as a Los Angeles split squad lost to the San Diego Padres 7-5 Friday.

"The hits I gave up were on fastballs that were strikes," he said. "They should hit those. If they were just crushing stuff no one should be hitting, I'd be a little more worried."

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly wasn't concerned about the right-hander, either. Greinke, who signed a $147 million, six-year contract to join the team in December, tossed two scoreless innings against the Chicago White Sox in his Cactus League debut.

"He's fine," Mattingly said. "He was just going after people."

Greinke gave up two runs and five hits, avoiding more damage when a runner was thrown out at the plate in the first inning. He escaped a bases-loaded, none-out jam in the third.

The 2009 AL Cy Young Award winner allowed doubles to his first two batters, Everth Cabrera and Chris Denorfia. Chase Headley followed with a single to right, but Denorfia was thrown out at the plate on first baseman Adrian Gonzalez's relay from Jerry Hairston Jr.

"We really strung some hits together," said Padres manager Bud Black, whose club finished with 15. "That was great to see. Overall, I thought our at-bats were aggressive."

Dodgers slugger Matt Kemp, recovering from left shoulder surgery on Oct. 5, played his first spring training game and finished 0 for 2. He grounded out and struck out looking.

"Good to get it out of the way," Kemp said. "I was excited. I felt a little jumpy, just like any first spring training game. But I'm just happy to be back on the field."

Kemp was the designated hitter. He fought back from an 0-2 count in the first inning against San Diego starter Freddy Garcia.

"I swung and fouled a changeup," Kemp said. "Last year, that would have made my left shoulder hurt. I didn't hurt today. That's a really good sign that my shoulder is well and responding to the rehab."

Mattingly wants to ease Kemp into the lineup. He's not expected to play Saturday against the Los Angeles Angels, but could be back in the batting order Sunday against Cleveland at Camelback Ranch.

"That last at-bat, I wish I had gotten some (RBIs) or something," Kemp said. "You never like to strike out. But it's only the second at-bat."

Logan Forsythe singled and scored the go-ahead run in the ninth for the Padres on a balk by Zach Lee.

NOTES: Dodgers LF Carl Crawford is frustrated that he has yet to play in a spring training game. He was supposed to make his first appearance Friday, but it's now expected to be delayed a week because of nerve irritation in his left arm. Crawford had surgery on his throwing elbow in August. "Personally, I've been so anxious to get back out there," he said. "But my time will come." ... Dodgers RF Andre Ethier sat out because of a blister on his right hand that gave him trouble last season. INF Justin Sellers also didn't play. Sellers had an in-grown toenail removed two days ago. ... Dodgers great Sandy Koufax left camp Thursday after working with the pitchers. "I hate to see him go," Clayton Kershaw said. "It's great to talk to him. I hope he comes back sometime during the season."

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-03-01-BBO-Padres-Dodgers/id-710a0eb34c45409baa536aaaa23a8af3

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Friday, February 8, 2013

Facebook briefly takes over entire Internet with redirection bug

Devin Coldewey , NBC News ? ? ? 17 hrs.

A bug with Facebook's ubiquitous embedded widgets redirected millions from the websites they were visiting to Facebook itself Thursday. It's now fixed, but for awhile, some of the largest sites in the world were inaccessible.

Visitors to such sites as CNN, The Washington Post, BuzzFeed, the Gawker network (including Gizmodo), and NBC News were instantly transferred to a Facebook error page upon loading the intended site.

Users not logged into Facebook did not get the error, which led people to conclude, correctly, that the problem was with the Facebook Connect service, which governs "likes," "comments" and other Web-based features of the social network.

Facebook declined to disclose the specifics of the error, but offered the following statement via email to NBC News:

For a short period of time, there was a bug that redirected people from third party sites with Facebook Login to Facebook.com. The issue was quickly resolved.

It was "quickly resolved" for some, at least: On NBCNews.com, the disturbance lasted for less than 15 minutes, from 4:30 to 4:42 p.m. PT. For other sites it was longer; ReadWriteWeb said the bug lasted about an hour, from 4 to 5 p.m. PT.

Those on Twitter (and Facebook, of course) jammed those sites nearly instantaneously with comments on how it was a little disturbing that Facebook could essentially hijack a large part of the Internet ? even if it was unintentional.

If the error had not been fixed by Facebook in a timely manner, the affected sites would likely have be able to intervene by disabling the widgets themselves. The temporary loss of Facebook login and likes would be a small price to pay for an accessible website.

Because the outage was so widespread and public, a more thorough explanation can probably be expected from Facebook once officials there have time to take a closer look at what went wrong.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/facebook-briefly-takes-over-entire-internet-redirection-bug-1B8297602

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Plywood maker Boise Cascade soars after IPO

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, applauds during his company's IPO on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, left, confers with specialist Christopher Culhane during his company's IPO, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Boise Cascade Chief Executive Officer Thomas Carlile, second from right, joined by members of the company?s executive management team, rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange, to celebrate their IPO, Wednesday, Feb. 6, 2013. Strong earnings reports from media giants Disney and Time Warner aren't impressing investors in early trading, and major U.S. market indexes are opening lower. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Riding a U.S. housing recovery and a booming stock market, Boise Cascade, a maker of plywood and other building materials, jumped 25 percent in its market debut Wednesday.

It's the latest solid first-day gain for an IPO, boding well for other companies that want to raise money by going public. Cruise company Norwegian Cruise Line rose 30 percent in its Jan. 18 debut, and has kept rising. Child care provider Bright Horizons gained 27 percent on Jan. 25. Homebuilder Tri Pointe added 12 percent on Jan. 31.

"It's a very healthy IPO market," said Francis Gaskins, president of researcher IPOdesktop. "The lake is rising in terms of the stock market and that brings in IPOs, and in that context, IPOs generally do quite well."

The Dow Jones industrial average, a stock market bellwether, had closed above 14,000 on Friday for the first time since the financial crisis.

When Wall Street rolls out the red carpet for companies like Boise Cascade Co. and others looking to tap the markets for money, it can have a ripple effect across the economy. Selling shares gives companies funds that they can use to grow their business and add more employees.

That path has been a difficult one since the financial crisis broke in 2007, however. Wild swings in stock market prices made investors and companies more nervous about going public, weighing on deal volume. Still, a handful of big debuts, such as the Facebook Inc. IPO last May and General Motors Co.'s return to the public markets in 2010, helped put a gloss on the market and raised the total dollar value of IPOs.

So far this year, 13 companies have raised $5.5 billion in U.S. initial public offerings of stock, according to data provider Dealogic. That's up sixfold from $909 million raised by eight companies in the same stretch last year. In all of 2012, 145 IPOs raised $47.2 billion, though IPOs all but dried up late in the year as concern over the "fiscal cliff" mounted. Lawmakers' deal over taxes at the beginning of January averted the steep tax increases and spending cuts that would have kicked in, helping rally the stock market and unthaw the IPO market.

A burst of companies went public last month ? it was the biggest January, by amount of money raised, on record dating back to 1993, said data provider Dealogic. But almost half that money came from the IPO of Zoetis, Pfizer's animal health business. It raised almost $2.6 billion in the largest IPO since Facebook's $16 billion debut.

Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. raised $514 million, while TRI Pointe Homes LLC gained $268 million in its IPO and Bright Horizons Family Solutions LLC $222 million.

Investors may have been particularly drawn to Boise Cascade and TRI Pointe as a way to bet on the housing recovery. Home sales and prices have routinely been setting multiyear highs as they come back from the real estate collapse, fueled by improvements in the job market and the overall economy, coupled with low interest rates.

Shares in the 13 biggest publicly traded U.S. builders remain well off their peak prices from 2005, during the housing boom. Still, their stocks, on average, more than doubled in 2012.

That supports demand for real estate-related IPOs, Gaskins said.

And more is likely coming. Another homebuilder, Taylor Morrison Home Corp., filed documents for an initial public offering in December. The Scottsdale, Ariz., company hopes to raise up to $250 million.

Boise Cascade isn't a homebuilder itself. Originally formed in 1913, Boise Cascade makes plywood and other wood products and building materials, supplying about 4,500 wholesalers, home improvement centers, retail lumberyards and other customers. It bought office supply chain OfficeMax in 2003. That company then sold its paper and wood products division to Madison Dearborn Partners LLC. The private equity firm took Boise Cascade to market and still owns about 70 percent of the Boise, Idaho, company after the IPO. Office supply chain OfficeMax Inc. also kept a 20 percent stake.

Boise Cascade raised $247.1 million in its IPO, which was more than it expected, from selling 11.8 million shares for $21 each. It had initially set a price range of $16 to $18, and raised that to $18 to $20 on Tuesday in a signal of healthy demand. Boise Cascade plans to use $25 million to repay debt and the rest for general corporate purposes.

Trading under the "BCC" ticker symbol on the New York Stock Exchange, Boise Cascade's stock gained $5.15 to close at $26.15.

_____

AP Business Writers Steve Rothwell and Michelle Chapman contributed to this story from New York.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2013-02-06-Boise%20Cascade-IPO/id-56ba5b6ace6348fa8556ee271de69a73

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Professor discovers how new corals species form in the ocean

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Since the observations made by English naturalist Charles Darwin on the Galapagos Islands, researchers have been interested in how physical barriers, such as isolation on a particular island, can lead to the formation of new species through the process of natural selection. Natural selection is a process whereby heritable traits that enhance survival become more common in successive generations, while unfavorable heritable traits become less common. Over time, animals and plants that have morphologies or other attributes that enhance their suitability to a particular environment become more common and more adapted to that specific environment.

Researchers today are intimately familiar with how physical barriers and reproduction isolation can lead to the formation of new species on land, especially among plants and animals with short generation times such as insects and annual plants. Michael E. Hellberg, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at LSU, however, is interested in a more obscure form of speciation: the speciation of animals in the ocean.

"Marine plants and animals can drift around in the ocean extremely long distances," Hellberg said. "So how do they specialize?"

In a recent publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, or PNAS, Hellberg and his graduate student Carlos Prada investigate how corals specialize to particular environments in the ocean. Corals, animals that form coral reefs and some of the most diverse ecosystems in the world, start their lifecycle with a free floating larval stage. Coral larvae can disperse vast distances in open water. Different coral species share similar geographical locations, with different species often existing only yards apart. As Prada and Hellberg propose in their recent publication, the large dispersal potential of coral larvae in open water and the proximity of different species on the ocean floor creates a mystery for researchers who study speciation. Hellberg and Prada ask, "How can new marine species emerge without obvious geographic isolation?"

When it comes to corals within the relatively small confines of the Caribbean, which spans approximately 3 million square kilometers, the key to the puzzle appears to be habitat depth in the ocean. In others words, natural selection has led to the formation of different coral species according to how deep in the ocean these different corals grow.

Prada and Hellberg study candelabrum corals of the genus Eunicea, generally known as "sea fans," for which sister species have been shown to be segregated by ocean depth. One sister species survives better in shallow waters, while the other is better adapted to deep waters. These corals, like other corals, are very slow-growing animals. In fact, sea fan corals don't reach reproduction age until they are 15-30 years old, and can continue reproducing until they are 60 or more years old. So while candelabrum coral larvae can disperse large distances from their parents, landing and beginning to grow in either shallow or deep water habitats, small differences in survival rates at different depths between the two species and long generation times can combine to produce segregation.

"When these coral larvae first settle out after dispersal, they are all mixed up," Hellberg said. "But long larvae-to-reproduction times can compound small differences in survival at different depths. By the time these corals get to reproduction age, a lot has changed."

The shallow water sea fan coral even has a different morphology than its deep water sister. The shallow water coral fans out into a wide network of branches, while the deep water coral grows tall and spindly. According to Hellberg, these differences in morphology might well be genetic, with the different corals having different protein structures and levels of expression that are better adapted to their specific water depth environment. Hellberg hopes in future research to investigate the genetic basis of these different morphologies.

In other interesting results, Prada explained how transplanting the shallow coral species to deep water environments, and vice versa, can cause the coral to take on a morphology more like that of its sister species.

"Their morphologies are not super fixed," Prada said. "But they can't change all the way to a different morphology."

Prada observed that while shallow water sea fans can become taller and more spindly when transplanted in deep water environments, they don't seem to be able to make a complete transition to the morphology of the deep water sea fan. This suggests that the two corals, while they likely had a common ancestor, have adapted genetically and biochemically to their respective water depths.

Prada did ocean dives in the Bahamas, Panama, Puerto Rico and Cura?ao to sample candelabrum coral colonies. Back in the lab, he performed tests on the coral samples' genes to determine how shallow and deep corals become genetically different.

"Normally, organisms are differentiated by geography," Prada said. "But these corals are differentiated by depth."

Prada and Hellberg's research provides new insights into how new species form in the ocean, a topic of relatively limited research as opposed to speciation of terrestrial organisms.

###

Original paper, visit http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/01/22/1208931110

Louisiana State University: http://www.lsu.edu

Thanks to Louisiana State University for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/126680/Professor_discovers_how_new_corals_species_form_in_the_ocean

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New proof asteroid impact killed off dinosaurs

Don Davis

An artist's impression of a 6-mile-wide asteroid striking the Earth. Scientists now have fresh evidence that such a cosmic impact ended the age of dinosaurs near what is now the town of Chixculub in Mexico.

By Charles Choi
LiveScience

The idea that a cosmic impact ended the age of dinosaurs in what is now Mexico now has fresh new support, researchers say.

The most recent and most familiar mass extinction is the one that finished the reign of the dinosaurs ? the end-Cretaceous or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, often known as K-T. The only survivors among the dinosaurs are the birds.

Currently, the main suspect behind this catastrophe is a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet, an idea first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son, geologist Walter Alvarez. Scientists later found that signs of this collision seemed evident near the town of Chicxulub (CHEEK-sheh-loob) in Mexico in the form of a gargantuan crater more than 110 miles (180 kilometers) wide. The explosion, likely caused by an object about 6 miles (10 kilometers) across, would have released as much energy as 100 trillion tons of TNT, more than a billion times more than the atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

However, further work suggested the Chicxulub impact occurred either 300,000 years before or 180,000 years after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. As such, researchers have explored other possibilities, including other impact sites, such as the controversial Shiva crater in India, or even massive volcanic eruptions, such as those creating the Deccan Flats in India.

Courtesy of Paul Renne

Doctoral student Bill Mitchell collects a volcanic ash sample from a coal bed just above the final dinosaur extinction level.

Timing of an impact
New findings using high-precision radiometric dating analysis of debris kicked up by the impact now suggest the K-T event and the Chicxulub collision happened no more than 33,000 years apart. In radiometric dating, scientists estimate the ages of samples based on the relative proportions of specific radioactive materials within them. [Wipe Out: History's Most Mysterious Mass Extinctions]

"We've shown the impact and the mass extinction coincided as much as one can possibly demonstrate with existing dating techniques," researcher Paul Renne, a geochronologist and director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center in California, told LiveScience.

Courtesy of Klaudia Kuiper

Near Jordan, Mont., rock layers expose the level (lower arrow) where dinosaurs and many other animals and plants went extinct. The arrows point to coal beds that contain thin volcanic ash layers that were dated.

"It's gratifying to see these results, for those of us who've been arguing a long time that there was an impact at the time of this mass extinction," geologist Walter Alvarez at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this study, told LiveScience. "This research is just a tour de force, a demonstration of really skillful geochronology to resolve time that well."

The fact the impact and mass extinction may have been virtually simultaneous in time supports the idea that the cosmic impact dealt the age of dinosaurs its deathblow.

"The impact was clearly the final straw that pushed Earth past the tipping point," Renne said. "We have shown that these events are synchronous to within a gnat's eyebrow, and therefore, the impact clearly played a major role in extinctions, but it probably wasn't just the impact."

The new extinction date is precise to within 11,000 years.

"When I got started in the field, the error bars on these events were plus or minus a million years," added paleontologist William Clemens at the University of California at Berkeley, who did not participate in this research. "It's an exciting time right now, a lot of which we can attribute to the work that Paul and his colleagues are doing in refining the precision of the time scale with which we work."

Cosmic Log: Asteroid closes in for close encounter?? and a swift kick

Although the cosmic impact and mass extinction coincided in time, Renne cautioned this does not mean the impact was the only cause of the die-offs. For instance, dramatic climate swings in the preceding million years, including long cold snaps in the general hothouse environment of the Cretaceous, probably brought many creatures to the brink of extinction. The volcanic eruptions behind the Deccan Traps might be one cause of these climate variations.

"These precursory phenomena made the global ecosystem much more sensitive to even relatively small triggers, so that what otherwise might have been a fairly minor effect shifted the ecosystem into a new state," Renne said.

The cosmic impact then proved the death blow.

"What we really need to do is to understand better what was going on before the impact ? what was the level of ecological stress that existed that allowed the impact to be the straw that broke the camel's back?" Renne said. "We also need better dates for the massive volcanism at the Deccan Flats to better understand when it first started and how fast it occurred."

The scientists will detail their findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Follow LiveScience on Twitter @livescience. We're also on Facebook? and? Google+.

Source: http://science.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/07/16887641-new-proof-that-asteroid-impact-killed-off-the-dinosaurs?lite

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