[18], DePalma began excavating systematically in 2012[1]:11 and quickly found the site to contain very unusual and promising features. By 2013, he was still studying the site, which he named "Tanis" after the ancient Egyptian city of the same name,[5] and had told only three close colleagues about it. And, if they are not forthcoming, there are numerous precedents for the retraction of scholarly articles on that basis alone.. Help News from Science publish trustworthy, high-impact stories about research and the people who shape it. A A. Paleontologist Robert DePalma has done it again. May 9, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EDT. "His line between commercial and academic work is not as clean as it is for other people," says one geologist who asked not to be named. DePalma took over excavation rights on it several years ago from commercial fossil prospectors who discovered the site in 2008. A meteor impact 66 million years ago generated a tsunami-like wave in an inland sea that killed and buried fish, mammals, insects and a dinosaur, the first victims of Earth's last mass extinction event. If I were the editor, I would retract the paper unless [the raw data] were produced posthaste, he says. There is still much unknown about these prehistoric animals. Their team successfully removed fossil field jackets that contained articulated sturgeons, paddlefish, and bowfins. By Nicole Karlis Senior Writer. During the long process of discussing these options they decided to submit their paper, he says. DePalma says his team also invited Durings team to join DePalmas ongoing study. Last modified on Fri 8 Apr 2022 11.20 EDT. Last month, During published a comment on PubPeer alleging that the data in DePalmas paper may be fabricated. It's at a North Dakota cattle ranch, some 2,000 miles (3,220 km) away. . Please make a tax-deductible gift today. By Dave Kindy. The deposit itself is about 1.3m thick, sharply overlaying the point bar, in a drape-like manner. Could NASA's Electric Airplane Make Aviation More Sustainable? Since 2012, paleontologist Robert DePalma has been excavating a site in North Dakota that he thinks is "an incredible and unprecedented discovery". The plotted line graphs and figures in DePalmas paper contain numerous irregularities, During and Ahlberg claimincluding missing and duplicated data points and nonsensical error barssuggesting they were manually constructed, rather than produced by data analysis software. Boca paleontologist Robert de Palma uncovers evidence of the day the dinosaurs diedand how it connects to homo sapiens. During described the findings in her 2018 masters thesis, a copy of which she shared with DePalma in February 2019. Impact Theory of Mass Extinctions and the Invertebrate Fossil Record, The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary. DePalma's team says the killing is captured in forensic detail in the 1.3-meter-thick Tanis deposit, which it says formed in just a few hours, beginning perhaps 13 minutes after impact. Ritchie Hall | Earth, Energy & Environment Center 1414 Naismith Drive, Room 254 Lawrence, KS 66045 geology@ku.edu 785-864-4974 Scientists believe they have been given an extraordinary view of the last day of the dinosaurs after they discovered the fossil of an animal they believe . 'The day the dinosaurs died': Fossilized snapshot of mass death found