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The popular theory that dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid 65million years ago has been challenged. It was believed the Chicxulub crater in Mexico was the 'smoking gun' of the mass extinction event. Molten droplets from the ancient asteroid impact were found just below the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary - a geological layer of sediment linked with the extinction. But soil samples from the 112-mile wide crater show the impact predates the disappearance of the dinosaurs by about 300,000 years. The latest research has been published in the Journal of the Geological Society. Study author Professor Gerta Keller from Princeton University...

The world's biggest bang wiped out the dinosaurs in a cataclysm that swathed our planet in choking dust - or at least that is what many palaeontologists claim. Others say dinosaurs died out gradually as Earth's climate and geology changed. It sounds a typical academic dispute - but last week it erupted into open warfare. Allegations have been made of deceit and unethical behaviour. One scientist is even alleged to have held back inconvenient evidence. 'This affair has become an object lesson on how partisan and unethical the whole dinosaur controversy has become,' said Dr Norman MacLeod, keeper of palaeontology...

EGS-AGU-EUG Joint Assembly, Nice, April 2003 Mass-extinction controversy flares again Core from asteroid crater fuels debate on what wiped out the dinosaurs. 10 April 2003 REX DALTON [photo] The dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago. © alamy.com A claim that the asteroid that struck Mexico 65 million years ago did not cause the mass extinction that wiped out dinosaurs triggered heated debate at a meeting this week. The announcement is based on preliminary analysis of the first core drilled into the 185-kilometre Chicxulub asteroid crater near the Yucatan Peninsula. Gerta Keller of Princeton University in New Jersey says...

Just as scientists thought they had nailed down the answer, the debate has been reopened. A team of scientists claims the widely accepted theory that the extinction was triggered by a huge asteroid thumping into Mexico 65m years ago, cannot be true. Evidence that a giant asteroid impact was the cause of the dinosaurs' demise first emerged in the 1980s. Scientists analysing ancient soils in Italy found that layers of clay from the end of the Cretaceous period, the time the dinosaurs vanished, were unusually rich in a heavy metal called iridium. Later evidence of the layer was found in...

September 15, 2003 Could an enormous volcanic eruption have killed the dinosaurs? Cardiff University -- The extinction of the dinosaurs -– thought to be caused by an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago –- was more likely to have been caused by a 'mantle plume' -– a huge volcanic eruption from deep within the earth's mantle, the region between the crust and the core of the earth. This theory, already supported by a significant body of geologists and palaeontologists, is strengthened by new evidence to be presented at an international conference at Cardiff University on 11-12 September. Research by...

A series of gargantuan volcanic eruptions may have ended at nearly the same time that the dinosaurs went extinct, a new study shows. The find bolsters a controversial theory that massive volcanism contributed to the global catastrophe known as the K-T extinction, which wiped out the dinosaurs and many of Earth's other organisms 65 million years ago. Gerta Keller, a Princeton University paleontologist, presented the new research last week at a meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver, Colorado. She found that underwater portions of the ancient lava flows, known as the Deccan Traps, contained marine fossils only...

Volcanic Eruptions, Not Meteor, May Have Killed The DinosaursRajahmundry Quarry. 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. (Credit: Photo courtesy Gerta Keller) ScienceDaily (Oct. 30, 2007) — A series of monumental volcanic eruptions in India may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, not a meteor impact in...

Scientists probing a vast crater off Mexico's Yucatan peninsula questioned a popular theory about dinosaurs on Monday, saying the collision that formed the crater happened too far back in time to have caused their extinction by itself. Much evidence points to the idea that an asteroid or comet gouged the Earth around 65 million years ago, triggering volcanic and climate changes that eventually wiped out the dinosaurs. When the huge, mostly underwater crater was found off Yucatan, it seemed the perfect candidate. "Since the early 1990s the Chicxulub crater on Yucatan, Mexico, has been hailed as the smoking gun that...

Volcanoes that erupted in India about 65 million years ago were instrumental in the extinction of dinosaurs, according to new research. For the last thirty years scientists have believed a giant meteorite that struck Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula was responsible for the mass extinction of dinosaurs, the Daily Telegraph reported on Wednesday. But now Gerta Keller, a geologist at Princeton University, New Jersey, says fossilised traces of plants and animals dug out of low lying hills at El Penon in northeast Mexico show this event happened 300,000 years after the dinosaurs disappeared. Keller suggests that the massive volcanic eruptions at the...

Scientists may have destroyed the well-established theory that a single, massive asteroid strike killed off the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. New data suggests the Chicxulub crater in Mexico, supposedly created by the collision, predates the extinction of the dinosaurs by about 300,000 years. The controversy over what killed the dinosaurs may run and run The authors say this impact did not wipe out the creatures, rather two or more collisions could have been responsible. The report is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An international group of scientists led by Professor Gerta Keller, of Princeton University,...

A 65 million year old tsunami is still wreaking havoc in the scientific community, a New Mexico State University professor says. The 300-foot-tall tsunami - an aftereffect of the giant meteor impact that some scientists think killed off the dinosaurs - scrambled fossils and rock and has made the event very hard to date, said Timothy Lawton, head of NMSU's geology department.

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....

LONDON (Reuters) - Gas-belching volcanoes may be to blame for a series of mass extinctions over the last 545 million years, including that of the dinosaurs, new evidence suggested on Thursday. A series of eruptions that formed the Deccan Traps in what is now India pumped huge amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere 65 million years ago, with likely devastating repercussions for the Earth's climate, scientists said. Gigantic eruptions, forming so-called "flood basalts," are one of two leading explanations for a series of mass extinctions that have killed off species periodically throughout history. The other theory involves asteroid impacts --...