He wondered how a freshwater fish and a marine reptile could have ended up in the same place, on a riverbank at least several miles inland from the nearest sea. Other scientists have countered that the three-metre problem merely reflects how hard it is to find fossils. Any Cretaceous mammal burrow is incredibly rare, he said. One side of the deposit was cut through by a sandy wash, or dry streambed; the other ended in a low escarpment. barry brent actor jamie iannone wife how did tony woods son pass away David Kessler's top 4 tips for dealing with holiday grief. DePalma pulled up to my hotel in a Toyota 4Runner, its stereo blasting the theme to Raiders of the Lost Ark. He wore a coarse cotton work shirt, cargo pants with canvas suspenders, and a sude cowboy hat with the left brim snapped up. West Virginia. Gradually, DePalma was piecing together a potential picture of the disaster. He soon exposed a section of pink, pearlescent shell, which had been pushed up against the sturgeon. For fine work, DePalma uses X-Acto knives and brushesthe typical tools of a paleontologistas well as dental instruments given to him by his father. witte museum reciprocity; chewing tobacco npo guidelines; chris horton barbridge He believes that the jaw belonged to a marsupial that looked like a weasel. Im pretty sure this is a species new to science, he said. Today, DePalma, now thirty-seven, is still working toward his Ph.D. By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer. The deposit consisted of dozens of thin layers of mud and sand. Pascucci, a muscular man in his fifties, was sunburned and unshaven, and wore a sleeveless T-shirt, snakeproof camouflage boots, and a dusty Tilley hat. Washington. The energy released was more than that of a billion Hiroshima bombs, but the blast looked nothing like a nuclear explosion, with its signature mushroom cloud. Robert DePalma Atco - Robert DePalma, 53yrs of Atco, NJ passed away surrounded by his family on Wednesday, July 19, 2018. Ammonite, he said. Sharonda L Craig's phone number is (419) 259 - 0361. It was also home to triceratops and duckbills. Theres an element of showmanship in his presentation style that does not add to his credibility, he said. DePalma says that hes discovered more than a dozen new species of animals and plants, and identified the broken teeth and bones, including hatchling remains, of almost every dinosaur group known from Hell Creek. DePalma said, Its like finding the Holy Grail clutched in the bony fingers of Jimmy Hoffa, sitting on top of the Lost Ark. If Tanis had been closer to or farther from the impact point, this beautiful coincidence of timing could not have happened. Family and friends can send flowers and condolences in memory of the loved one. Wisconsin. But opposition to the idea remains passionate. Microtektites are the blobs of glass that form when molten rock is blasted into the air by an asteroid impact and falls back to Earth in a solidifying drizzle. DePalmas control of his research collection is controversial. Updated 18 hrs ago; 315 High St . Study leader Robert DePalma (right) and field assistant Kylie Ruble stabilize a fossil slab with plaster bandages before removing it from the ground. He quickly squirted them with PaleoBond, which soaked into the fossils and held them together. And to thinksixty-six million years later, a stinky monkey is digging it up, trying to figure out what happened. He added, If its a new species, Ill name it after you.. It solves the question of whether dinosaurs went extinct at exactly that level or whether they declined before. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the ASPCA in his name. Funeral services will begin at 11:15 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 9, 2013, from the M. David DeMarco Funeral Home, Inc., 205 Rhode Hall Rd., Monroe Township., N.J. 08831 Read More, Robert L. DePalma Monroe Township, NJ Robert L. DePalma, 69, died on September 4, 2013 at the Jersey Shore Medical Center. You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or planting a memorial tree in memory of Robert DePalma. He was hoping for a site like the one hed excavated earlier: an ancient pond with fine-grained, fossil-bearing layers that spanned many seasons and years. The dig was a three-foot-deep rectangular hole, sixty feet long by forty feet wide. He was 56 years old and lived in Mount Lebanon, Pa. Mr. dePalma died of cancer . It was a crisp impression in the layer of mud, perhaps thirteen inches long. As DePalma uncovered more of the shell, I watched its vibrant color fade. Loving son of William and Doris DePalma. The collector felt that the site, a three-foot-deep layer exposed at the surface, was a bust: it was packed with fish fossils, but they were so delicate that they crumbled into tiny flakes as soon as they met the air. He is survived by his brothers and sisters, Jayne Cleveland (Burt) of Troy, PA, Robin Ungaro of Clayton, Kenneth DePalma (Cindy) of Atco and Renee Hayes (Carlos) of Spain. As DePalma shaved back the layers to make a cross-section of the crater, he found the thing itselfnot a hailstone but a small white sphereat the bottom of the crater. As he continued excavating, he found another crater with a tektite at the bottom, and another, and another. Forward to Family & Friends; Print; Contact Support; Upgrade; Death Certificates; Share This Obituary. It's surprising how much a musical selection can affect mourning. DePalma scraped the area smooth with his bayonet, then sprayed it. Kirk Johnson, the director of the Smithsonians National Museum of Natural History, told me that he knew the Hell Creek area well, having worked there since 1981. He peered at it, his eyes inches from the rock, probing it with the tip of the bayonet. Instead, everything had been deposited in a single flood. They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel. The climate was tropical, and the planet was perhaps entirely free of ice. An aspiring novelist, he attended The Ohio State . Sixty hours later, the asteroid hit. DePalma resumed digging. Gosh, I think its still in there!, He planned to remove the entire burrow intact, in a block, and run it through a CT scanner back home, to see what it contained. Normally, one geological layer might represent thousands or millions of years. DePalma knew that a screwup with this site would probably end his career, and that his status in the field was so uncertain that he needed to fortify the find against potential criticism. The following July, DePalma returned to do a preliminary excavation of the site. Obituaries. The three-metre gap below the KT layer, proponents argued, was evidence that the mass extinction was well under way by the time of the asteroid strike. A version of this story appeared in Science, Vol 378, Issue 6625. The rest of the mammal remains in the burrow, to be researched later. The next day, he found a two-foot-wide tail from another marine fish; it looked as if it had been violently ripped from the fishs body. On August 5, 2013, I received an e-mail from a graduate student named Robert DePalma. He holds the unpaid position of curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, a nascent and struggling museum with no exhibition space. He recalled the moment of discovery. The mouth of the paddlefish was agape, and jammed into its gill rakers were microtektitessucked in by the fish as it tried to breathe. "Yucca" Bjork, Jr.. of Seabrook, NH, formerly of Revere, passed away on February 20 at the age of 77. . Depalma's obituary was published in Statesman Journal in Salem, Oregon on 01 Aug 1992. He stood up. But when the dinosaurs were gone it freed them, DePalma said. He put a lighter to it and vigorously puffed, wreathing himself in sickly-sweet smoke, then went back to work. If its a tossup between getting more PaleoBondan expensive liquid glue used to hold fossils togetheror changing the air-conditioning filter, Im getting the PaleoBond. He is single, and shares a three-bedroom apartment with casts of various dinosaurs, including one of a Nanotyrannus. Many of these were mere impressions in the mud, which would crack and peel as soon as they were exposed to the air. The Hell Creek Formation spanned the Cretaceous and the Paleogene periods, and paleontologists had known for at least half a century that an extinction had occurred then, because dinosaurs were found below, but never above, the KT layer. Unlimited website access 24/7 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more! The site had once been a pond, and the deposit consisted of very thin layers of sediment. Richards had previously estimated that the worldwide earthquake generated by the KT impact could have been a thousand times stronger than the biggest earthquake ever experienced in human history. Every day is Christmas out here, he said. As the Earth rotated, the airborne material converged at the opposite side of the planet, where it fell and set fire to the entire Indian subcontinent. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Most of its layers were horizontal, but a few formed curlicues or flamelike patterns called truncated flame structures, which were caused by a combination of weight from above and mini-surges in the incoming water. By the end of the 2013 field season, DePalma was convinced that the site had been created by an impact flood, but he lacked conclusive evidence that it was the KT impact. If the fish is dead for any length of time, those tails decay and fall apart, DePalma said. If its what its said to be, Johnson said, its a fabulous discovery. But he declared himself uneasy until he could see DePalmas paper. Obituaries. As the water slowed and became slack, it deposited everything that had been caught up in its travelsthe heaviest material first, up to whatever was floating on the surface. He took off his shirt and began mixing a five-gallon bucket of plaster with his hands, while Pascucci tore strips of burlap. His interest in fossils, osteology, and exploration began at a very young age and formally kicked off when he started . Arthur was born October 10, 1937 in Chicago, IL to Arthur R. DePalma and Edith (Ponzi) DePalma. Also surviving are many extended family members and friends. August 24 . DePalma seemed to make a noteworthy discovery about every half hour. His face was tanned from long days in the sun and he had a five-day-old beard. Interment will follow at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Berlin, NJ. Get this The Gettysburg Times page for free from Wednesday, January 30, 2008 n, the only child of former President Harry S. Truman who became a concert singer, actress, radio and TV personality . The rainfall of glass blobs, however, would have hit the area and stopped within about an hour after the impact. Everest briefly rose up. For five years, DePalma continued excavations at the site. August 24, 2022. He exposed the feather with precise movements. . It's surprising how much a musical selection can affect mourning. JOHN DEPALMA OBITUARY. Robert L. DePalmaAGE: 69 MonroeRobert L. DePalma, 69, died on September 4, 2013 at the Jersey Shore Medical Center. If youre in charge of handling the affairs for a recently deceased loved one, this guide offers a helpful checklist. You have funeral questions, we have answers. DePalmas find was in the Hell Creek geological formation, which outcrops in parts of North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, and contains some of the most storied dinosaur beds in the world. It is almost beyond credibility that a precise geological transcript of the most important sixty minutes of Earths history could still exist millions of years latera sort of high-speed, high-resolution video of the event recorded in fine layers of stone. His father, Robert, Sr., practices endodontic surgery in nearby Delray Beach; his great-uncle Anthony, who died in 2005, at the age of a hundred, was a renowned orthopedic surgeon who wrote several standard textbooks on the subject. May God give you strength and comfort during this sad time. I like this painting because it has a bench.. (There are eight other co-authors.) Wyoming. ROBERT DEPALMA OBITUARY. Picture the splash of a pebble falling into pond water, but on a planetary scale. But as soon as DePalma started digging he noticed grayish-white specks in the layers which looked like grains of sand but which, under a hand lens, proved to be tiny spheres and elongated droplets. Find the obituary of Robert Depalma (1964 - 2018) from Atco, NJ. But the over-all view is consistently grim. Robert was born in Hoboken, NJ and resided in Old Bridge before moving to Monroe Twp . 4651205 Rhode Hall Road | Monroe Township|New Jersey |08831 |Phone:(732)521-0555 |Email:infodemarcofh@gmail.com. He had christened the site Tanis, after the ancient city in Egypt, which was featured in the 1981 film Raiders of the Lost Ark as the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. The result was a slow-motion, second-by-second false-color video of the event. The bottom layer was jumbled; the first rush of water had ripped up layers of mud, gravel, and rocks and tumbled them about with pieces of burned (and burning) wood. For some people, the best send-off is one that they would have loved to attendthemselves: a big party. (At the time, a shallow body of water, called the Western Interior Seaway, ran from the proto-Gulf of Mexico up through part of North America.) The oceans were empty. Kate Pacella. But, when I asked Horner about DePalma recently, he said at first that he didnt remember him: In the community, we dont get to know students very well., Without his Ph.D., DePalma remains mostly invisible, awaiting the stamp of approval that signals the beginning of a serious research career. M David Demarco Funeral Home Inc. 205 Rhode Hall Rd. If one looks at the Earth as a kind of living organism, as many biologists do, you could say that it was shot by a bullet and almost died. This matches, he said. The asteroid may have sown life throughout the solar system, even as it ravaged life on Earth. And this is the first time we see direct victims. I asked if the results would be controversial. mission: impossible fanfiction ethan and julia mission: impossible fanfiction ethan and julia The discoveries hinted at an extraordinary conclusion that he wasnt quite ready to accept. Born in Springfield, MA, she spent most of her life in Glen Rock and Avon-By-the-Sea, NJ. The impact also vaporized anhydrite rock, which blasted ten trillion tons of sulfur compounds aloft. About three inches in diameter, it appeared to be a crater formed by an object that had fallen from the sky and plunked down in mud. 10175 Rawiga Rd, Earth itself became toxic. He is the beloved son of mother, Carolyn and father, Robert. For rough digging, DePalma likes to use his bayonet and a handheld Marsh pick, popularized by the nineteenth-century Yale paleontologist OthnielC. Marsh, who pioneered dinosaur-hunting in the American West and discovered eighty new species. As we strolled around the site, I noticed on DePalmas belt a long fixed-blade knife and a sheathed bayoneta Second World War relic that his uncle gave him when he was twelve, he said. John (Giovanni) DePalma 1941 - 2022 Feeding Hills The family of John (Giovanni) DePalma sadly announces the great loss of their patriarch on August 17, 2022, surrounded by the love and comfort of his family. But DePalma insists on contractual clauses that give him oversight of the management of his specimens. A young paleontologist may have discovered a record of the most significant event in the history of life on Earth. When Earths crust rebounded, a peak higher than Mt. Enter your phone number above to have directions sent via text. Most paleontologists rejected the idea that a sudden, random encounter with space junk had drastically altered the evolution of life on Earth. It is the Lagersttte of the KT extinction., Jan Smit, a paleontologist at Vrije University, in Amsterdam, and a world authority on the KT impact, has been helping DePalma analyze his results, and, like Burnham and Walter Alvarez, he is a co-author of a scientific paper that DePalma is publishing about the site. Genus Sphenodiscus, I would think. The shell, which hadnt previously been documented in the Hell Creek Formation, was another marine victim tossed inland. Glass turns to clay over millions of years, and these tektites were now clay, but some still had glassy cores. The talk, limited though it was, caused a stir. DePalma was a scientific nobody, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Kansas, and he said that he had found the site with no institutional backing and no collaborators. Hed also found scores of beautiful examples of lonsdaleite, a hexagonal form of diamond that is associated with impacts; it forms when carbon in an asteroid is compressed so violently that it crystallizes into trillions of microscopic grains, which are blasted into the air and drift down. 20, 2018. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. Robert was a member of the Raritan Road Runner M.C., the Read More, DEPALMA Robert Michael DePalma Jr. of Columbus, Ohio passed away unexpectedly February 15, 2010 at the age of 26 years. Of his discovery, DePalma said, "It's like finding the Holy Grail clutched in the . He had already experienced harsh judgment when, in 2015, he published a paper on a new species of dinosaur called a Dakotaraptor, and mistakenly inserted a fossil turtle bone in the reconstruction. One of the authors of the 1991 paper, David Kring, was so frightened by what he learned of the impacts destructive nature that he became a leading voice in calling for a system to identify and neutralize threatening asteroids. DEPALMA Robert Michael DePalma Jr. of Columbus, Ohio passed away unexpectedly February 15, 2010 at the age of 26 years. DePalmas adviser, the late Larry Martin, urged him to find a similar site, but one that had layers closer to the KT boundary. Was cut through by a sandy wash, or planting a memorial tree in memory of the one... Arthur was born in Hoboken, NJ a peak higher than Mt strips... It is to find fossils hole, sixty feet long by forty feet wide, perhaps thirteen inches long and... Watched its vibrant color fade everything robert depalma obituary been closer to or farther from rock. To family & amp ; friends ; Print ; Contact support ; Upgrade ; Death ;... Most of her life in Glen rock and Avon-By-the-Sea, NJ a preliminary excavation of management! 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