Word: layers
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...randomly located and perched on top of one another, and such formations make traditional exploration and analysis difficult, if not impossible. Says A.B. ("Pete") Slaybaugh, chief of Continental Oil's exploration team in the area: "Frequently we find ourselves drilling through more than one layer of soil, shale and rock, only to find another layer of the same. With a normal well there is usually only one layer. Mother Nature didn't do us any favors...
Hackett should have tried writing a straight-forward account of the strengths and weaknesses of opposing forces in Europe, something he is probably competent to handle. Instead, he has coated his diatribe for rearmament with a nauseating layer of future history, complete with fake footnoting and eyewitness accounts. But then, the derision Hackett opens himself to makes it less likely anyone will listen to his argument--which is just as well...
...next performer, a onetime professional carpet layer named Turk Johnson is more exotic. Dressed as Star Wars' Darth Vader-complete with mask and laser sword-Johnson, 32, not only wriggles out of his elaborate costume but along the way he also executes a ribald torch dance, pours flaming alcohol over his body, swallows a lighted torch and twirls sparklers. The third and final ecdysiast is Larry Slade, 32, who once worked as a bodyguard for the pianist Liberace. To feminine cries of "Take it off, take it all off!" Slade slowly peels away his tight black outfit and then...
...created a scientific parlor game. Hypotheses abound to explain the extinction. Brains too small in bodies too large? Emerging mammals feasting on dinosaur eggs? Now comes evidence for another possibility. Geologist Walter Alvarez, probing an ocean canyon near Gubbio, Italy, discovered an abrupt increase in iridium in a limestone layer dating back to the dinosaurs' demise. Probable cause: some mysterious, still unfathomable extraterrestrial event...
...team from the University of California at Berkeley were sampling the strata because they provide a rare, undisturbed record of reversals in the earth's magnetic field. Such fluctuations can influence climate, and possibly allow more cosmic radiation to assail the earth's atmosphere. One layer, only a centimeter thick and tracing back 65 million years, showed a sharp excess of iridium, an element 1,000 times more plentiful in otherworldly matter than in the earth's crust. The "spike" in the readings made a sobering point. "It's the first experimental evidence that something quite...