Alan Russell Hildebrand (born 1955) is a Canadian planetary scientist and Associate Professor in the Department ofGeoscience at theUniversity of Calgary.[1] He has specialized in the study ofasteroid impact cratering,fireballs andmeteorite recovery. His work has shed light on theextinction event caused by theChicxulub asteroid at the end of theCretaceous period.[2] Hildebrand is one of the leaders of thePrairie Meteorite Network search project.[3]
Hildebrand got a B.S. inGeoscience at TheUniversity of New Brunswick in 1977.[3] He got a Ph.D. inPlanetary Sciences at TheUniversity of Arizona under William Boynton in 1992 with the dissertation "Geochemistry and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary impact ejecta".[4]
In 1978 theChicxulub Crater in theYucatan Peninsula of Mexico was discovered by Glen Penfield, but its significance was not recognized at the time. In 1990, as part of his doctoral program, Hildebrand, working with the father-and-son team ofLuis andWalter Alvarez, published controversial articles suggesting that a large impact from an asteroid caused the mass extinction at the end of theCretaceous period.[2] The impact site was eventually determined to be at Chicxulub and the extinction it caused became known as theK-T event.[5][6]
Hildebrand is part of theGeological Survey of Canada, focusing mainly on the K-T event.