Antarctic Blast Made Australia, Room For Dinosaurs

Agent Provocateur writes "Posted on the Science Daily site is a story from Ohio State University about a massive Antarctic blast that may have contributed to the Permian-Triassic extinction." From the article: "Its size and location -- in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia -- also suggest that it could have begun the breakup of the Gondwana supercontinent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward. Scientists believe that the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have ultimately killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide -- four or five times wider."

Comments

Re:more importantly

[orthogonal]

How did the dinosaurs get here? It is my theory that they rode in on that meteor, bringing with them the advanced technologies that our government is still unearthing today (Al Gore "invented" the internet by digging it up from an ancient dinosaurian city). Also, "rawr" I'm a dinosaur.

Mr. President, shouldn't you be working on a plan to get us out of Iraq, rather than posting on slashdot?

Obligatory Anime Reference.

[RoffleTheWaffle]

Well, I see that we've found Adam. Crap, now the world's going to end in the dumbest imaginable way and we're all going to melt.

Re:not as clear-cut as the article makes it out

[ozmanjusri]

But the situation is much murkier with the Permian extinctions. Last I'd heard, we have yet to find clear evidence of an impact in the form of iridium, a dust layer or shocked quartz.

Xu and Yang, 1993 and Yang et al. 1995 have reported Iridium spikes and Stishovite microspherules in non-marine P/T sediments in Australia and Antarctica. There's no Permian oceanic crust left since all of it has been subducted, and the Iridium and Stishovite levels are an order of magnitude smaller than C/T sediments, but it is still evidence of some type of major impact.

Thank you!

[Alsee]

The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 6 miles wide, while the Wilkes Land meteor could have been up to 30 miles wide -- four or five times wider.

Thank you for for adding that! Saved us all the trouble of pulling out slide rules to work out that ugly divison problem ourselves!

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Re:hollywood disaster movies

[bladesjester]

"You can't destroy the Earth! That's where I keep all my stuff!!" - The Tick