Walter Alvarez

Walter Alvarez is an American geologist best known for his role in proposing the asteroid impact hypothesis for the extinction of the dinosaurs. In collaboration with his father, Luis Alvarez, he published a groundbreaking study in 1980 that suggested a meteorite impact caused the mass extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary. His hypothesis was initially met with skepticism but later gained substantial support after the discovery of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico.