Dinosaur Deaths Outsourced to India?

EurekAlert ^ | 10/30/07 | Gerta Keller, etal

[crazyshrink]

Dinosaur Deaths Outsourced to India? Boulder, CO, USA - A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico. The eruptions, which created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds of India, are now the prime suspect in the most famous and persistent paleontological murder mystery, say scientists who have conducted a slew of new investigations honing down eruption timing.

"It's the first time we can directly link the main phase of the Deccan Traps to the mass extinction," said Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller. The main phase of the Deccan eruptions spewed 80 percent of the lava which spread out for hundreds of miles. It is calculated to have released ten times more climate altering gases into the atmosphere than the nearly concurrent Chicxulub meteor impact, according to volcanologist Vincent Courtillot from the Physique du Globe de Paris.

Keller's crucial link between the eruption and the mass extinction comes in the form of microscopic marine fossils that are known to have evolved immediately after the mysterious mass extinction event. The same telltale fossilized planktonic foraminifera were found at Rajahmundry near the Bay of Bengal, about 1000 kilometers from the center of the Deccan Traps near Mumbai. At Rajahmundry there are two lava "traps" containing four layers of lava each. Between the traps are about nine meters of marine sediments. Those sediments just above the lower trap, which was the mammoth main phase, contain the incriminating microfossils.

Keller and her collaborator Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, are scheduled to present the new findings on Tuesday, 30 October, at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver. They will also display a poster on the matter at the meeting on Wednesday, 31 October.

Previous work had first narrowed the Deccan eruption timing to within 800,000 years of the extinction event using paleomagnetic signatures of Earth's changing magnetic field frozen in minerals that crystallized from the cooling lava. Then radiometric dating of argon and potassium isotopes in minerals narrowed the age to within 300,000 years of the 65-million-year-old Cretaceous-Tertiary (a.k.a. Cretaceous-Paleogene) boundary, sometimes called the K-T boundary.

The microfossils are far more specific, however, because they demonstrate directly that the biggest phase of the eruption ended right when the aftermath of the mass extinction event began. That sort of clear-cut timing has been a lot tougher to pin down with Chicxulub-related sediments, which predate the mass extinction.

"Our results are consistent and mutually supportive with a number of new studies, including Chenet, Courtillot and others (in press) and Jay and Widdowson (in press), that reveal a very short time for the main Deccan eruptions at or near the K-T boundary and the massive carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide output of each major eruption that dwarfs the output of Chicxulub," explained Keller. "Our K-T age control combined with these results strongly points to Deccan volcanism as the likely leading contender in the K-T mass extinction." Keller's study was funded by the National Science Foundation.

The Deccan Traps also provide an answer to a question on which Chicxulub was silent: Why did it take about 300,000 years for marine species to recover from the extinction event? The solution is in the upper, later Deccan Traps eruptions.

"It's been an enigma," Keller said. "The very last one was Early Danian, 280,000 years after the mass extinction, which coincides with the delayed recovery."

Keller and her colleagues are planning to explore the onset of the main phase of Deccan volcanism, that is, the rocks directly beneath the main phase lavas at Rajahmundry. That will require drilling into the Rajahmundry Traps, a project now slated for December-January 2007/2008.

[Fractal Trader]

ggg

[SunkenCiv]

A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico.

This Deccan Traps crap has been trotted out at least annually almost as long ago as the Alvarez' theory emerged. There's nothing to this, never has been, and they've got nothing new in this latest version to suddenly transform it into a compelling alternative. "Oh, that big crater, that just happened by coincidence as the volcano eruptions killed all the dinos." Ridiculous BS, always has been, always will be.

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[Tarpon]

At least it wasn’t man and his SUVs.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks. Just beat me to it. :’)

[Fred Nerks]

Megafauna and the attenuated gravity of the antique system:

http://www.bearfabrique.org/Catastrophism/sauropods/biganims.html

[Does so]

Alvarez found a thin layer of iridium at the level of the die-offs. Is that consistent with the Deccan incidents?

[SunkenCiv]

Nope. The iridium layer is ET in origin. But see, that’s not a problem for those who think bolide impacts are like getting hit in the face with a pie plate of whipped cream.

[SunkenCiv]

I thought Alvarez had basically strong-armed everyone into accepting his theory...but I recall hearing about the Deccan alternative more than 10 years ago.

Dewey McLean claimed that Alvarez threatened him, which isn't what happened. McLean though felt so much pressure that he had some nerve problems. Apparently he was viewed as being a washed-up old has-been / never-was by some of his academic colleagues at his university workplace. Anyway, he retired or semi-retired, and built a website in which he kept harping on A) the claim that the extinctions were gradual, B) that the extinctions were already taking place when the impact happened, C) that the extinctions may not have been so gradual after all, and D) that volcanism was the main cause of the dinos' end.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks CandS.

[LibWhacker]

Just the same old group of disgruntled egg-on-their-face paleontologists who have been having a hissy fit ever since a physicist dared to enter their jurisdiction and tell them what REALLY happened to the dinosaurs.

You know what they say, if it doesn't involve math, it's not science.

[SunkenCiv]

CO2 enrichment wouldn’t make plants flourish. Plants have to have CO2, obviously, but they flourish just fine with our current 150 to 300 ppm. Plants flourish from adequate sunlight and water, provided the temps are suitable (the higher up in latitude or altitude, the fewer the plants).

Also, if you’ve seen the movie “Apollo 13”, you know that too much CO2 causes brain asphyxia.

[SunkenCiv]

Well put!!!

[SunkenCiv]

from the Wayback Machine, via a 2005 backup of the old hard drive:

Could impact cause a volcano on Earth?
answered by Chuck Wood
Space Studies
Univ. of North Dakota

We believe that broken comets or asteroids - such as machined gunned into Jupiter in 1994 - have hit the Moon (forming an impact crater chain), and a recent scientific report suggests that a line of old impact craters across the central USA was caused by a similar line of impact collisions. In these cases volcanism was not triggered. A big enough impact might trigger volcanic activity, and one scientist suggested that that might be the origin of Iceland, which is very big compared to other ocean hot-spots.

[Swordmaker]

From reading your comment I think you would be interested in my Electric Universe Ping List. I will ping you to one of the threads.

[Bernard Marx]

I never did hear if it had an effect on plate tectonics.

Earthquakes by definition have an impact on plate techtonics.

Tsunamis are the *result* of earthquakes. Earthquakes are the *result* of plate tectonics. Plates can abruptly (in the sense of geologic time) shift directions. I've never heard of a theory to account for that.

[qam1]

India was located near the antipode of the Chicxulub crater. A meteor impact could explain the volcanic activity on the opposite side of the Earth from the impact.?

Considering the Deccan traps formed 3 million years before the alleged impact and the location antipodal to the Deccan Traps at the time of their formation is now on the floor of the eastern Pacific Ocean that would be a good trick

[Swordmaker]

CO₂ enrichment does make plants florish. Plants inhale CO₂ and exhale Oxygen. While plants do fine in our current atmosphere they do better in a Carbon Dioxide rich environment.

[Swordmaker]

CO₂ enrichment does make plants florish. Plants inhale CO₂ and exhale Oxygen. While plants do fine in our current atmosphere they do better in a Carbon Dioxide rich environment.

[Swordmaker]

We think the Iridium is ET in origin. It is entirely possible that a volcano could have brought up the Iridium from deep sources within the Earth.

[SunkenCiv]

The iridium is ET in origin. There were feeble claims by the volcano fans that the iridium could have come from the Earth, but the fact is that the level is far too high for that to be possible. :’)