Oct. 26, 2007 -- New evidence dug from the shores of the Bay of Bengal supports the radical idea that it was a series of monumental volcanic eruptions
that wiped out the dinosaurs, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico. The discovery
confirms two important things,
said Keller First, that the most massive Deccan eruption and the KT mass extinction happened at the same time. Second, that the later, final eruption is timed right to have slowed the recovery of many living things. This latter matter of the slow recovery has long been
a mystery to paleontologists, she said" -- Reference http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/10/26/dinosaur-volcano.html "Anew statistical study of mass extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth is backing up
the idea that no single meteor, volcanic eruption or other
lone gunman is ever to blame, even in the case of the Cretaceous-Tertiary event that brought the end of dinosaurs million years ago. Instead, the worst die-offs happen
when some sort of interminable, multi-generational pressure on life is combined with a few powerful blows. It's what is now being called the press/pulse theory of mass extinctions. The theory "is essentially a more eloquent way of saying what I and many other paleontologists have been saying for many years" said Gerta Keller of Princeton University. Namely that the impact-kill hypothesis is all wrong. Impacts alone could not have been the killing mechanism for the KT or any of the other major mass extinctions" In the late Cretaceous case massive volcanism — the Deccan Traps eruption in India —
and attendant climate change, coincided with an impact that pushed highly stressed biota over the brink" -- Reference http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/extinction_pla.html
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