Volcano Dino-die Off Theory Gets New Support

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"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 of species known to have existed after the extinctions.

In other words, all of the marine sediments that built up on the lava flows came from after the extinction.

"So we can say that the flows, which mark the end of the main phase, of the Deccan eruptions ended near the K-T mass extinctions," she said";


Full story;


http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...-volcanoes.html





Hm i think its quite likely that huge volacanic erruptions contributed at least to a reasonably large extent of the dinosaur extinctions- at the very least, the colossal meteorite/asteroid, whatever, which impacted the earth at the time of the dinosaurs extinction would have greated great tremors with its impact on the ground which would have reached far and wide and these tremors would have probably set off their fair shair of ripe volcano's.

I personally don't think there is one main thing which killed off the dniosaurs, i think there were probably numerous environmental/climate disasters which happened nearing the time of the dinosaurs extinction, which individually wouldn't have been enough to wipe out all of the dinosaurs, but together with too shorter recovery periods of time between the events proved very lethal.

In a way, the dinosaurs never completely died out- afterall, we still have birds, which have been proven to be descended from raptor-like feathered dinosaurs. They say that chickens, physically and genetically, are very close to dinosaurs, in fact it is thought that the scales which cover the lower legs of chickens are said to be the same sort of scales which covered many types of dinsaurs.


Either way though it is certain that volcano's have a devastating ability to wipe out hundreds, even thousands of species, in just a single eruption or two- evidence for one such example happening would of course be the Yellowstone super volcano, which is still alive now and has had absolutely devastating impacts and far-reaching effects in the past when it has blown its roof.
 

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