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While some scientists quickly accepted the “Alvarez hypothesis,” as it came to be called, others dismissed it as “codswallop.”

The Alvarez hypothesis was referenced in the 1993 blockbuster "Jurassic Park," and just five years after that the movies "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon," both about an asteroid heading toward Earth, were released.

Thanks to these finds—and the discovery of a huge, 180-kilometer-wide crater in Chicxulub, Mexico, that is believed to be the mark of the K-T killer—most scientists now accept the Alvarez hypothesis.

If he finds the mineral clues below the fossil deposits, he says, the impact probably preceded and could have caused the extinction, thus strengthening the Alvarez hypothesis.

He and his co-workers had simply hoped to elaborate on the Alvarez hypothesis by detecting trace amounts of rare noble gases, like neon and xenon, in the layer of Cretaceous clay deposited during roughly the same period that the dinosaurs became extinct.