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LECTURE:

The Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction: What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?
Published on Mar 18, 2015

About 66 million years ago, 70 percent of all the species that existed at the time, including the non-avian dinosaurs, became extinct in an apocalypse widely thought to have been caused by a meteor or comet impact on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.

At approximately the same time, a series of volcanic eruptions in Western India produced torrents of lava that discharged large amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur gas into the atmosphere. Mark Richards reviews these remarkable events and explains a radical new theory suggesting they may be causally related. He also discusses how ongoing research is shedding new light on the true cause(s) of the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction.

Presented in collaboration with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University

Recorded February 3, 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNA_xct5JU

90 million years ago India rifted away from Madagascar and began its rapid movement northward, ultimately colliding with Asia between 55-50 million years ago. During the late Cretaceous (80 - 65 mya), India was moving at rates of more than 15 cm/year. No modern plate moves that fast. India's northward race towards Asia may be something of a plate tectonic speed record. The reason it moved so quickly was because it was attached to a large oceanic slab of lithosphere that was subducting beneath the southern margin of Asia

http://www.scotese.com/indianim.htm

This was lubricated by a hot spot of magma that coincided with the laying down of the Deccan Traps