T. rex, the Crater of Doom, and the Nature of Scientific Discovery

Working from the 1970s to the early 1990s, Walter Alvarez and his research teamsought the cause of the mass extinction that claimed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The present paper discusses thatresearch in terms of eight puzzling observations, eight episodes of hypothetico-predictive reasoning, enumerative induction,and Jung's interrogative theory of scientific discovery. The Alvarez case history paints scientific discovery as a process in...