In high school, during the summer and on weekends, DePalma collected fossils, made dinosaur models, and mounted skeletons for the Graves Museum of Archaeology and Natural History, in Dania Beach. JOHN DEPALMA OBITUARY. Rev. During the winter months, when not in the field, DePalma prepared and analyzed his specimens, a few at a time, in a colleagues lab at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton. Leave a sympathy message to the family on the memorial page of Robert Depalma to pay them a last tribute. Fossils are a big business; wealthy collectors pay hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions, for a rare specimen. The main competing hypothesis is that the colossal Deccan volcanic eruptions, in what would become India, spewed enough sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to cause a climatic shift. This story will cast a . He held it up between his fingers and peered at it with a lens. Fossils, worked loose by wind and rain, spill down the sides. Visitation will be Saturday September 7th from 7-9 and Sunday September 8th from 2-4 & 7-9 at the funeral home. 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. When Walter Alvarez visited the dig last summer, he was astounded. On Nov. 29, 1958, in Lima, he married Janet Daley, who survives. Browse Obituaries and Death Records in Pennsylvania Select a city or town in Pennsylvania from the alphabetized list below. The timing was all wrong. How the Biggest Fraud in German History Unravelled. Born in Springfield, MA, she spent most of her life in Glen Rock and Avon-By-the-Sea, NJ. Almost right away, I saw it was unusual, he told me. 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. 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. The American market is awash in fossils illegally smuggled out of China and Mongolia. I called, and he told me that he had discovered a site like the one Id imagined in my novel, which contained, among other things, direct victims of the catastrophe. Bob was born in Newark, NJ on December 26, 1948 to the late James and Rose DePalma. 20, 2018. Ways to honor Robert DePalma's life and legacy. A couple of two-by-fours, along with various digging tools and some metal pipe for taking core samples, leaned against the far side of the hole. Written by on 27 febrero, 2023. A native of East Orange, N.J., he graduated from Duquesne University with a bachelor's degree in 1958 and a master's degree in business administration in 1963. I got in, and we drove for an hour or so, turning through a ranch gate and following a maze of bone-rattling roads that eventually petered out in a grassy basin. JOHN DEPALMA OBITUARY. I have visited many paleontological sites, but I had never seen so many specimens found so quickly. It solves the question of whether dinosaurs went extinct at exactly that level or whether they declined before, the paleontologist Jan Smit said. Bob was born in Newark, NJ on December 26, 1948 to the late James and Rose DePalma.He is survived by his loving wife, Lisa DePalma of Fort Myers Beach, FL.A Celebration of Life will be held in the future and will be announced via www.fortmyersmemorial.com, 46 files added to the album Memories Album, This site uses cookies to provide you with a great user experience. Check other contact information for Shelly Craig. The Tanis site, in short, did not span the first day of the impact: it probably recorded the first hour or so. Angela (DePalma) on May 29,1965 and the couple remained in Revere where they raised . Maybe well find the raptor that these feathers came from, but I doubt it. Click or call (800) 729-8809. Family and friends can send flowers and condolences in memory of the loved one. Some of the ejecta escaped Earths gravitational pull and went into irregular orbits around the sun. Robert was born in Hoboken, NJ and resided in Old Bridge before moving to Monroe Twp. At one point, DePalma set off to photograph the layers of the deposit which had been cut through and exposed by the sandy wash. . February 15, 1950 - January 4, 2015 Bristol, Connecticut Set a Reminder for the Anniversary of Robert's Passing. Wisconsin. View Obituary & Service Information Predeceased by his son, Richard, Jr. on the same day due to Covid, brother Robert, parents Salvatore and Mayme DePalma, many aunts, uncles, and cousins Dennis and Michael DePalma. Please share a memory of Robert to include in a keepsake book for family and friends. Website Designed by funeralOne, Fort Myers Memorial Gardens Funeral Home & Cemetery. Utah. Kirk Cochran, a professor at the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook University, in New York, recalled that when DePalma presented his findings there were gasps of amazement in the audience. In one fell swoop, DePalma may have solved the three-metre problem and filled in the gap in the fossil record. Scientists still debate many of the details, which are derived from the computer models, and from field studies of the debris layer, knowledge of extinction rates, fossils and microfossils, and many other clues. Paddlefish still live today; they have a long bony snout, with which they probe murky water in search of food. Dear brother Read More, Submit an obit for publication in any local newspaper and on Legacy. 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. He was a member of the GAC and Amici D'Oro. As DePalma uncovered more of the shell, I watched its vibrant color fade. But these are primitive feathers, and most are a foot long. Every day is Christmas out here, he said. Obituaries 07-13-2022. by . In the 21st century, it's not just urns and gravestones anymore. The forests were charred stumps. Send Flowers. The flood had entombed everything immediately, so specimens were exquisitely preserved. If youre in charge of handling the affairs for a recently deceased loved one, this guide offers a helpful checklist. This was not a paleontological question; it was a problem of geophysics and sedimentology. Robert L. DePalma, 69, died on September 4, 2013 at the Jersey Shore Medical Center. And yet the tektites fell into an active flood. He froze dead lizards in ice-cube trays, which his mother would discover when she had friends over for iced tea. When DePalmas find was picked up by the national media, Horner dismissed it as speculation and merely one data point. He suggested an alternative scenario: the T.rex might have accidentally bitten the tail of a sleeping hadrosaur, thinking that it was dead, and then backed away when it realized its mistake. The oceans were empty. He turned back to the block on his table and held a magnifying lens up to the tektite. When DePalma first visited the site, he noted, partially embedded on the surface, the hip bone of a dinosaur in the ceratopsian family, of which triceratops is the best-known member. In 1890, the New York Herald began a series of sensational articles about the controversy with the headline Scientists Wage Bitter Warfare. The rivalry has since become known as the Bone Wars. We could see when there were buds on the trees, he told me. Cherished Grandfather of Anesa, Jessie, Adrianna, Emily, Elizabeth, Alaina, Elizabeth, Kayla, Katie, Xavier, Isaiah, Christian, Arianna, Hailey, Nichole, and Richard. Beloved Husband of Judith Elizabeth DePalma. she was the loving mother of Debra (Heenan) DePalma and Donny Heenan, Jr., the cherished grandmother of Donny Heenan, III, Lauren Heenan, Janelle, Heenan and Adrienne Heenan; the dear sister of the late Robert Moschella, Sr. and the treasured aunt of Corrine Perkins, Robert Moschella, Jr. and Stephen . 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. The result was a slow-motion, second-by-second false-color video of the event. One was David Burnham, DePalmas thesis adviser at Kansas, who estimates that DePalmas site will keep specialists busy for at least half a century. 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. To learn more, view our Cookie Notice. Robert DePalma Atco - Robert DePalma, 53yrs of Atco, NJ passed away surrounded by his family on Wednesday, July 19, 2018. Whiteside was also on the . (There are eight other co-authors.) He was an officer in the intelligence and security department of the Army from 1958 to 1960. This is the last day of the Cretaceous. Trapped inside were two impact particlesanother landmark discovery, because the amber would have preserved their chemical composition. 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. Unlimited website access 24/7 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more! All rights reserved. FUNERAL HOME. In the late Cretaceous, widespread volcanoes spewed vast quantities of gas and dust into the atmosphere, and the air contained far higher levels of carbon dioxide than the air that we breathe now. When I first visited the lab, in April, 2014, a block of stone three feet long by eighteen inches wide lay on a table under bright lights and a large magnifying lens. The block told the story of the impact in microcosm. and those are my deepest, most intimate feelings about our friendship., DePalmas thesis adviser estimated that the site will keep specialists busy for half a century. Its hard to have a life outside of my work, he said. Robert is preceded in death by his loving wife Concetta Marie DePalma (2004). He is survived by his loving wife,. But as the years passed the evidence mounted, until, in a 1991 paper, the smoking gun was announced: the discovery of an impact crater buried under thousands of feet of sediment in the Yucatn peninsula, of exactly the right age, and of the right size and geochemistry, to have caused a worldwide cataclysm. Funeral homes; Help and advice. He loaned the museum his childhood fossil collection for display, but in 2004 the museum went bankrupt and many of the specimens were carted off to a community college. 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. This is Cretaceous flypaper, he said. Peering through the lens, DePalma picked away at the block with a dental probe. DePalmas great-uncle Anthony, who lived in Pompano Beach, took him under his wing. On August 5, 2013, I received an e-mail from a graduate student named Robert DePalma. His X-Acto knife unearthed the edge of a fossilized fin. Predeceased by his son, Richard, Jr. on the same day due to Covid, brother Robert, parents Salvatore and Mayme DePalma, many aunts, uncles, and cousins Dennis and Michael DePalma. Posted in . Make a Memorial Donation . DePalma Excavating (814) 558-8355 Paul DePalma Owner/ Operator - Driveways. Live ammonite, ripped apart by the tsunamithey dont travel well, he said. Terms of Service apply. But, in the late nineteen-seventies, a young geologist named Walter Alvarez and his father, Luis Alvarez, a nuclear physicist, discovered that the KT layer was laced with unusually high amounts of the rare metal iridium, which, they hypothesized, was from the dusty remains of an asteroid impact. I used to visit him every other weekend and show him my latest finds, DePalma said. Washington. Genus Sphenodiscus, I would think. The shell, which hadnt previously been documented in the Hell Creek Formation, was another marine victim tossed inland. Before retiring . 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. A private gathering will be held to honor his memory. 4651205 Rhode Hall Road | Monroe Township|New Jersey |08831 |Phone:(732)521-0555 |Email:infodemarcofh@gmail.com. Paleontologist Robert DePalma, featured in PBS's "Dinosaur Apocalypse," discusses an astonishing trove of fossils. Theres nothing in the world thats ever been seen like this, Richards told me. They were mostly locked away in storage, unavailable for public display and enjoyment. David Kessler's top 4 tips for dealing with holiday grief. Robert L. DePalma Monroe Township, NJ An hour later, when the plaster had cured, he chiselled through the rock pedestal beneath the fossil and flipped the specimen over, leaving the underside exposed. 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 . Measurements of the layer of ash and soot that eventually coated the Earth indicate that fires consumed about seventy per cent of the worlds forests. Back in the lab, he would go through this surface to access the fossil, with the plaster jacket acting as a cradle below. He is preceded in death by his parents Michael and Elsie DePalma and sister Rose. There are other people out there who say they do know, and hes one of those people. If the fish is dead for any length of time, those tails decay and fall apart, DePalma said. Send simple, comforting meals with Home Chef. By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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. Amber is preserved tree resin and often contains traces of whatever was in the air at the time, trapping the atmospheric chemistry and even, sometimes, insects and small reptiles. One side of the deposit was cut through by a sandy wash, or dry streambed; the other ended in a low escarpment. Finally, he showed me a photograph of a fossil jawbone; it belonged to the mammal hed found in the burrow. In 2010, forty-one researchers in many scientific disciplines announced, in a landmark Science article, that the issue should be considered settled: a huge asteroid impact caused the extinction. He is the beloved son of mother, Carolyn and father, Robert. BRISTOL, PA David Anthony DePalma, 62, of Denver, a jazz musican known across the East Coast as a saxophonist and woodwind specialist who studied with Larry McKenna, passed . Robert Smith. He could have stumbled on something amazing, but he has a reputation for making a lot out of a little. As an example, he brought up DePalmas paper on Dakotaraptor, which he described as bones he basically collected, all in one area, some of which were part of a dinosaur, some of which were part of a turtle, and he put it all together as a skeleton of one animal. He also objected to what he felt was excessive secrecy surrounding the Tanis site, which has made it hard for outside scientists to evaluate DePalmas claims. Study leader Robert DePalma (right) and field assistant Kylie Ruble stabilize a fossil slab with plaster bandages before removing it from the ground. One by one, he dipped the burlap strips in the plaster and draped them across the top and the sides of the specimen. The climate was tropical, and the planet was perhaps entirely free of ice. Barbara S. DePalma, 87, of Jackson passed away peacefully at her home on Tuesday, July 12, 2022 surrounded by her loved ones. DePalmas control of his research collection is controversial. You can still show your support by sending flowers directly to the family, or planting a memorial tree in memory of Robert DePalma. DePalma hopes that his Tanis site will help decipher what happened on the first day after the impact. mission: impossible fanfiction ethan and julia mission: impossible fanfiction ethan and julia Parallel, streaming lines were visible on its surfaceSchlieren lines, formed by two types of molten glass swirling together as the blobs arced through the atmosphere. Lower down, it graded into a more turbulent band of sand and gravel, which contained the heavier fish fossils, bones, and bigger tektites. MIDDLETOWN -- Fairfield Ludlowe's John Whiteside set a Class L record with a time of 50.57 in winning the 100 backstroke at Wednesday's meet at Wesleyan. ROBERT DEPALMA OBITUARY. (Much of the Hell Creek land is privately owned, and ranchers will sell digging rights to whoever will pay decent money, paleontologists and commercial fossil collectors alike.) In 2012, while looking for a new pond deposit, he heard that a private collector had stumbled upon an unusual site on a cattle ranch near Bowman, North Dakota. DePalma thought that the bone might have grown around a foreign object and encased it. Interment will follow at Gate of Heaven Cemetery, Berlin, NJ. Furtive, ratlike mammals lived in the gloomy understory. Meanwhile, giant tsunamis resulting from the impact churned across the Gulf of Mexico, tearing up coastlines, sometimes peeling up hundreds of feet of rock, pushing debris inland and then sucking it back out into deep water, leaving jumbled deposits that oilmen sometimes encounter in the course of deep-sea drilling. The dinosaur feathers are crazy good, but the burrow makes your head reel. In paleontology, the term Lagersttte refers to a rare type of fossil site with a large variety of specimens that are nearly perfectly preserved, a sort of fossilized ecosystem. Now Im going to show you something special, he said, opening a wooden crate and removing an object that was covered in aluminum foil. The brutal shaking would have been enough to trigger a large seiche, and the first blobs of glass would have started to rain down seconds or minutes afterward. barry brent actor jamie iannone wife how did tony woods son pass away Robert is predeceased by his father, Nicholas DePalma, Sr., his mother, Florence; step Read More, Robert passed away on Thursday, July 19, 2018. 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. Occasionally, DePalma came across small plant fossilsflower petals, leaves, seeds, pine needles, and bits of bark. A funeral liturgy will be celebrated at 12:00pm at Immaculate Conception RC Church Spotswood. When the mosquitoes got bad, DePalma took out a briar pipe and packed it with Royal Cherry Cavendish tobacco. In 2013, DePalma briefly made news with a paper he published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. When I found that, I thought, Theres no way, this cant be right, DePalma said. 2023 Cond Nast. Robert L. Stevens (1787-1856), inventor, who was the son of Colonel John Stevens (B) Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), leading figure of 19th and early 20th-century American photography (B) Joe Sulaitis (1921-1980), running back for the New York Giants of the NFL, 1943-1953; Jeff Tamarkin, editor, author and historian DePalma poked the tip of an X-Acto into the thin laminations of sediment and loosened one dime-size flake at a time; hed examine it closely, and, if he saw nothing, flick it away. DePalma initially dismissed it as trash and decried the irresponsibility of the collector. Shelly Craig, 62 years old, currently living in Paoli, OK. Shelly Craig's phone number is (405) 331 - 0305. Mr. dePalma is survived by his wife, Maryann, and their three children, Robert, Diane Lange and Carolyn, and one grandchild, all of Pittsburgh. 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. Family and friends are welcome Thursday, February 18, 2021, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Slone & Co. Funeral Directors 13115 Lorain Ave, Cleveland, OH 44111, and for a Graveside Service on Friday, February 19, 2021, at 10:30 a.m. Ohio Western Reserve National Cemetery . You see skin, you see dorsal fins literally sticking straight up in the sediments, species new to science, he said. 10175 Rawiga Rd, With this deposit, we can chart what happened the day the Cretaceous died. No paleontological site remotely like it had ever been found, and, if DePalmas hypothesis proves correct, the scientific value of the site will be immense. Also predeceased by our beloved Nana: Romilda Monacelli DePalma . I never want to go through that again, he told me. "Yucca" Bjork, Jr.. of Seabrook, NH, formerly of Revere, passed away on February 20 at the age of 77. . Many scientists view this trade as a threat to paleontology and argue that important fossils belong in museums. But, without federal support for his work, he must cover almost all the costs himself. This was true not only in Hell Creek but all over the world. As DePalma carefully excavated the upper layers, he began uncovering an extraordinary array of fossils, exceedingly delicate but marvellously well preserved. Similar formations, caused by hailstones hitting a muddy surface, had been found before in the fossil record. West Virginia. We could experience this in real time. Peering at the layers was like flipping through a paleo-history book that chronicled decades of ecology in its silty pages. I have made an incredible and unprecedented discovery, he wrote me, from a truck stop in Bowman, North Dakota. Over millions of years, bits of it found their way to other planets and moons in the solar system. 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. I cant wait to get this back to the lab.. Photograph courtesy of Robert DePalma. One fish was impaled on the other. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. Many of these were mere impressions in the mud, which would crack and peel as soon as they were exposed to the air. He pointed to a series of regular bumps on the bone. DePalma seemed to make a noteworthy discovery about every half hour. The crater and the asteroid were named Chicxulub, after a small Mayan town near the epicenter. Wyoming. He never digs on public land, because of what he considers excessive government red tape. Obituary. DePalma found five sets of these patterns. It was a very bad day, DePalma said. Instead, everything had been deposited in a single flood. Check other contact information for Sharonda L Craig. A field assistant, Rudy Pascucci, left, and the paleontologist Robert DePalma, right, at DePalmas dig site. Leave your condolences to the family on this memorial page or send flowers to show you care. For five years, DePalma continued excavations at the site. As he continued excavating, he found another crater with a tektite at the bottom, and another, and another. An essay by Toni Morrison: The Work You Do, the Person You Are.. Robert DePalma. They're not a map to follow, but simply a description of what people commonly feel. He unwrapped a sixteen-inch fossil feather, and held it in his palms like a piece of Lalique glass. Sooner or later, theyve contended, a scientist will discover dinosaurs much closer to the moment of destruction. There are logjams of wood, fish pressed against cypress-tree root bundles, tree trunks smeared with amber. Most fossils end up being squashed flat by the pressure of the overlying stone, but here everything was three-dimensional, including the fish, having been encased in sediment all at once, which acted as a support. Its more parsimonious to suggest it was a known dinosaur, most likely a theropod, possibly a raptor. He kept digging. Obituaries 03-01-2023. by Journal Staff March 1, . Typically, paleontologists cede the curation and the care of their specimens to the institutions that hold them. I had never met DePalma, but we had corresponded on paleontological matters for years, ever since he had read a novel Id written that centered on the discovery of a fossilized Tyrannosaurus rex killed by the KT impact.