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Forget the asteroid
Although a minority of paleontologists remain skeptical, most now agree that the asteroid's crash blasted debris into the atmosphere that blocked out the sun for up to a year. (See 'Dream Team' Agrees Huge Asteroid Killed Dinosaurs) But Prauss disagrees.
Writing in next month's edition of the journal
Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology and working with
Princeton paleontologist Gerta Keller -- a well-known critic of the
Chicxulub theory -- Prauss maintains that radical changes to the flora
and fauna of the era began long before the Chicxulub impact (Chicxulub
means tail of the devil). Prauss argues that the impact was just one in a chain of catastrophic events that caused substantial environmental upheaval. One of those events was the massive, years-long volcanic activity in what is now the Deccan Plateau of India, which, like Chicxulub, is used by paleontologists to separate the Cretaceous period from the Paleogene period. But doubters persist. If the asteroid strike was such a doomsday event, how were some classes of species able to survive and even thrive, asks Norman MacLeod of the Natural History Museum in London. Since there's no direct evidence showing what killed the dinosaurs, the debate is likely to continue. See entire article: I agree that the Deccan Traps could have triggered the dinosaur extinction. The Deccan Traps, a "volcanic flood," buried huge portions of
India under Wouldn’t it make sense that thousands of cubic miles - cubic
miles! - of As the lava poured into the seas, te oceans must have boiled,
literally Warmer oceans and colder skies, a deadly
combination . . . which is what I
See aso
Volcanism
Killed Dinosaurs |
