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Volcanoes May Have Caused Mass Extinctions?
Hugh Pickens writes "According to recent research, huge amounts of sulphur dioxide released by volcanic eruptions may have had more to do with wiping out dinosaurs than the meteorite strike at Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Marine sediments drilled from the Chicxulub crater have revealed that that the mass extinctions occurred 300,000 years after Chicxulub hit Earth. The Deccan volcanism was a long cumulative process that released vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. '"On land it must have been 7-8 degrees warmer," says Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller. "The Chicxulub impact alone could not have caused the mass extinction, because this impact predates the mass extinction."' Keller also postulates a second larger and still unidentified meteor strike after Chicxulub, that left the famous extraterrestrial layer of iridium found in rocks worldwide and pushed earth's ecosystem over the brink. But where's the crater? "I wish I knew," says Keller."
The Chicxulub impact alone could not have caused the mass extinction, because this impact predates the mass extinction.
For the Chicxulub impact to have caused the mass extinction, it *must* have predated the mass extinction. How's it going to cause a mass extinction if it takes place after the mass extinction occurs?
Obviously they've hunted land they can see, maybe look under the ice? Just recently greenland discovered a new island when some ice melted.
Believe me, if I started murdering people, there would be none of you left.
But where's the crater? "I wish I knew
Its gotta be in Oklahoma. Trust me, that place is a **** hole!
This sounds like an L. Ron Hubbard story.
I know the circumstances of the dinosaur's extinction are controversial, but this is what they tought me way back in elementary school...
If you had ate least read the summary, you would have realized that this "predate" here means 300000 years...
Tom Cruise and John Travolta were right about Xenu all along!
The Deccan volcanism was a long cumulative process that released vast amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Yeah, but with our advanced technology, we can cut that time in half.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
It shouldn't be that hard to work it out, after all, wasn't it only about ten thousand years ago it happened? /ducks :)
So the earth is 4.5 billion years old. This person is talking about 300,000 years. So if my math is correct 300,000 / 4,500,000,000 = 00.0066666% of the total life span of the earth. That time span is less then 1% of the total time the earth has been around. How can their data be that accurate to know the temperatures when up X degrees etc. I know carbon dating is quite accurate but to know the temperature by looking at a sliver of time. Thats like knowing how much is in my bank account by looking at 3 pennies.
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
Everyone knows that the earth is only 6000 years old, as evidenced here They even have models of Eve with vegetarian Raptors. See. I do not understand why anyone pays any attention to these activist scientists. Duh...
Maybe the meteor impact caused the volcanos to start up.
right?
Fry: What killed off the dinosaurs?
Giant Super Brain: Me!
"I only speak the truth"
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Because our historical estimations from geologic and weather events more than 1 million years in the past are so broadly inaccurate, it is highly likely that it was a combination of widescale epidemics combined with supervolcano eruptions and other stress factors.
Sometimes the answer is not A, B, C, or D. Sometimes the answer is A, B, C and D.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I think we've all seen the crater by this point.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How about a huge impact somewhere in the south Pacific west of Chili, this caused a shockwave rippling out from there around the world. The shockwave ripples then reconverged on the opposite side of the world in India, causing the Deccan Traps to go pop. I figured out the likely location using the wonderful Earth Sandwich tool http://www.zefrank.com/sandwich/tool.html
A crater all that big would be pretty obvious, i.e. Hudson Bay or possibly the general Yucatan shape. I vote for the Yucatan because maybe it followed the other rock in right behind it and hit harder, which is why the one famous crater is so hard to see land-wise. Maybe the 300,000 years is how long the iridium took to land back on earth from being jettisoned into our atmosphere and/or beyond. (gravity)
stuff |
But where's the crater? "I wish I knew," says Keller."
It's the entire Gulf of Mexico. I mean, it's obvious from the shape of the thing.
Remember you read it here first.
DUH! The Church of Scientology has been saying this for years now, people! Get with the times!
L. Ron has been trying to tell you people for years!
We already knew this was the case, or at the very least that the deccan traps magma plume was a major contributor to that particular mass extinction.
This is so well accepted that it was in fact part of my Earth Science lecture today, my undergraduate FIRST year lecture.
Massive-ass Earth Farts, and Ka-Phooey! That's all it took?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
http://http//www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071023103947.htm
What is the cause of the extraneous decay?
One Russian researcher has performed a simple experiment that demonstrates a statistical enigma within decay rates that mysteriously correlates with movements of the stars, the Sun and the Moon
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/articles/time.html
Charles Ginenthal has written a scathing 17-page paper on the problems associated with absolute dating titled "Scientific Dating Methods In Ruins". Of relevance
Another interesting part ...
Not everybody agrees that there is validity to these dates ...
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
I do not care much for lizards. They are big, stupid and slow, and they smell. All these dinosaurs are around, and I hated them all, but there's all sorts of stupid regulations about dinosaurs, thanks to Al Gore leading the save the dinosaur charge.
So I hopped into my time machine, gathered up some of the world's famous hunters, went back in time and killed the dinosaurs. Me and Buffalo Bill must have slaughtered 1,200 T-Rex's in what is now Montana, just in one night of drinking and hooting and hollering and a-shooting.
Those of you wonder what really happened to Jesse James, though, should know that he really did die 65 million years ago. We were playing cards one night after a big hunt and I drew a royal flush to his full house. Jesse probably wouldn't blown my head off in anger, but Buffalo Bill was quicker on the draw and he said, "Don't even do it Jesse." Jesse stuffed his revolver back into his holster, grabbed the bottle and went off in a huff. But as he was a stompin' away, he was set on by a pack of raptors and chewed up. It was a sad thing, but T.R. was able to go shoot two down with that pistol of his, and, thus, while we couldn't save Jesse, we at least saved the bottle of whiskey.
I reckon it took us a few months to kill all them dinosaurs. Since they all ate the biggest dinosaurs, we just took out all the brontos and crushed their eggs, and the rest all starved. We shot a bunch too. And then I dropped everyone back into their own times, and came back to this one, and there was not a dinosaur to be found.
Thank god!
So I called upon Mr. Gore to see if he remembered how much he liked dinosaurs in this adjusted timeline, and he said that he thought dinosaurs were ok in their own time, and said that, if we didn't do something about global warming, dinosaurs might come back.
So now, I gotta back in time and gather up the boys and go visit henry ford.
Ah, the work that we do!
This is my sig.
Obviously he was struck in the ass by a big meteorite that otherwise would have destroyed Earth!
It's a great theory that fell out of favor back when Walter Alvarez http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Alvarez found the smoking crater we now call Chicxulub and got all the applause. Back then, there were only a few contrary types that dare maintain that the Deccan Traps made a stronger argument. The Deccan Traps, it was argued, occurred over quite a long span of time; lots of average degassing numbers were thrown out and everyone liked the catastrophic version of the impact crater. That, and the kickass artwork with the dinosaurs looking over their shoulder at their impending doom...
Here's the upshot: The theory of the traps can be extended to include other extinctions. The Siberian Traps occurred around the same time as the mass extinction that brought ABOUT the dinosaurs. And while folks are looking for that cometary impact, it's _possible _ that the same "hotspot" that created the Siberian Traps stayed in generally the same place, and later awoke to spew out the Deccan Traps. If that's the case, the hotspot in question is off the southwest coast of India, where there are volcanic sea mounts today.
Earth was pummeled by several strikes similar to the Shoemaker-Levy comet fragments that hit Jupiter back in 1994 instead of just one big strike. The resulting craters could be smaller than Chicxulub while causing enough shock damage to eventually set off every VEI 8 mega-colossal volcano there was. Since the Toba eruption 75K years ago lowered average global temps by 3 to 3.5 degrees Celsius for several years, nearly wiped out humanity, and may have caused a planet-wide die-off, a chain of similar eruptions over the next few thousand years resulting from the comet strikes could easily have led to a series of ELEs.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
It should be no surprise, then, that ancient alien city of T'Leth is right in the center of the Gulf of Mexico.
Those damn aliens were the second impact!
Why, yes I have been touched by His noodly appendage. And I plan to sue.
Too bad Usenet is sorta defunct...the parent deserves to get forwarded to rec.humor.funny.
seriously, this has to be proof that if you want your research funded, find some obscure way to link it to global warming.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
They say that meteor hit 300,000 years before the KT extinction. That would mean that they are able to date the rocks in the KT layer and samples from the crater to within 0.4% error (300,000/65,000,000). I don't know of any radioactive dating techniques that are used to date in the 10's million of years. Even with those, the accuracy will vary from researcher to researcher and sample to sample. If they are analyzing the the thickness of sediment layers on the side of a cliff, I can't see how they could claim that resolution. Consequently, the argument is semantic without that resolution because a meteor strike of that magnitude and volcanism in Deccan can both singly devastate massives species like the dinosaurs. Smaller animals are favored in those situations. In fact, I seriously question whether the humans as a species could survive such events.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Chili killed the dinosaurs?
Damn, I gotta try some of that!
Seeing the Iridium layer is thickest near Chixulub an impact somewhere else seems pretty hard to swallow. Also are there not major sulfur deposits under the Chixulub site? These were "credited" in the past with contributing to SO2 in the air which contributed to the extinction. As for measuring dates that accurately, after 65 million years, I think someone is dreaming.
I dunno, I'm not a geologist, but as far as I know geological processes are enormously slow (millions of years to make mountains, shift continental plates, etc.) A massive amount of volcanic activity in the 300,000 or so years after the planet being hit by a dirty big chunk of space rock might be something you would expect, with all the extra stress fractures it would cause in the earths mantle, which would take a long long time to heal.
Assume a volcano somehow got plugged up & couldn't errupt normally.
Could an exploding volcano look like a meteorite crater ?
What if a metorite crashed into the other side of the earth as exists a volcano, could a big enough impact cause a shockwave & an erruption on the other side of the planet much larger than normal erruptions ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
there's a saying medicine when looking to diagnose medical symptoms: when you hear hoofbeats, don't think of zebras (it's more likely to be horses causing the noise)
it's a variation on occam's razor: the more exotic explanation is the less likely one
volcanic activity is more likely than asteroids
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
What is it with you morons and your innability to write correctly your own languange?
OK, maybe/not really.
I was just looking at google maps one time an it sure looks like the remnants of a crater to me, judge for yourself.
The visible arc of the eastern most portion of the crater is the coastline to the east and a bit north of Polar Bear Provincial Park.
Why else would you have such a large semicircle coast just cut out of an otherwise irregular coastline?
http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=56.583692,-79.672852&spn=10.630137,27.597656&z=6&om=1
-- The morphemes of your disquisition are ascertainable, but they have eschewed an ambit of transpicuous exposition.
And what about Mt. Pinatubo, its eruption in 1991injected 20- million tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere ....
Is that more than all the sulfur dioxide man puts into the atmosphere? Hummmm
But but but I heard that very smart man Mr. Gore say . . .
You mean the earth has undergone repeated cycles of extreme warming and cooling WITHOUT man?
But but but I heard that very smart man Mr. Gore say . . .
I thought there was still some debate regarding whether the Central American crater is the actual impact site of the dinosaur-killing asteroid?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
There are other, larger impact craters on earth, so the Mexican crater idea was improbable all along. The earth's atmosphere is produced by outgassing of the planet through volcanoes and vents, so this is obviously a major reason for atmospheric change.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
I hate to be a bit self referential, but when Dr Keller came out with her press release, I wrote up a comparison of the Permian-Triassic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary Extinctions. The whole article centers around the idea that the Permian Extinction is assumed to be one caused by vulcanism where there is VERY strong evidence for that being the root cause so we ought to compare the KT to the PT if we want to see if lava trumps meteor.
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
Prior to pitching yeast, I use SO2 to sterilize my apple cider, instead of boiling (which sets pectin and drives off flavor). Why suggest volcanoes, when we damn well know where SO2 really comes from? The dinosaurs were fermenting cider. Lots and lots of cider, since dinosaurs were very large and could drink a lot.
I am very wary of your argument style. It is heavy on quotes but not much on the measurements themselves. This is very reminiscent of my past arguments with Creationists before I saw the light and realised they were a bunch of losers not deserving of my time.
I will follow my personally approved style on these issues: take the first article and look at it carefully, if it fails .... do not proceed.
Yes the article talks about measurements that indicate a separation of U235 and U238 isotopes therefore skewing age determination using this mechanism. However, this is only in sandstone. It is believed to be due to either water action or microbes. This does not affect igneous rocks. Therefore if the researcher is careful about the environment of the sample and the rock type and backs it up with other methods they should be OK. In fact the oldest rocks are dated using not just any bit of dirt they find but via zircon crystals in the matrix, multiple rocks, different environments similar results.
Conclusion, nothing to see here. Move on.
Bitter and proud of it.
But where's the crater? "I wish I knew," says Keller."
And no one but me has ever noticed the round, almost crater-like shape of the Gulf of Mexico...?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
apparently we all want there to be a single explanation for this. could it be ... just possibly ... that multiple events took place which led to mass extinction of dinosaurs? couldn't it be that a combination of factors which are inclusive (as opposed to mutually exclusive) of meteors, volcanoes, and possibly earth climate cycles and other events all contributed? it turns out the universe is a big, complex, inter-mingled mix of stuff ... and sometimes it conspires against itself.
I have seen loads of pictures of dinosaurs and there is often a volcano erupting in the background. The dinosaurs couldn't care less.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
how could a volcano produce the K-T Boundary layer, when the main component is from meteors.
Typically long time scale geologic events use potassium argon dating (which is especially useful in igneous rocks)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_argon_dating and not the more familiar Carbon Carbon dating. Carbon carbon dating only has a useful span of around 12,000 years, but can be used up to 60,000 years (though resolution drops sharply)http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dating
On the issue of "was it a volcano or was it an asteroid" the question is rather silly because an asteroid impact can easily cause widespread earthquakes and volcanism. Now can it work the other way around? I highly doubt it...
sig sig sig siggy sig
check out this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chixulub for size reference and location information. Its actually not so obvious...
sig sig sig siggy sig
you are not addressing the proper dating technique. radiocarbon dating != K-Ar dating.
In fact, you are attacking the entire concept of radioactive decay. Better have some good data to back that one up, buddy.
sig sig sig siggy sig
When would these meteor strikes have hit the earth in relation to the breakup of the continents? Pangea? Could they have something to do with the tectonic plates?
The 300,000 year hypothesis isn't widely supported.
... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-T_boundary
"Many scientists reject Keller's analysis, some arguing that the 10 meter (32.8 ft) layer on top of the impact spherules should be attributed to tsunami activity resulting from impact. Few researchers support Keller's dating of the impact crater." -- Wikipedia
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Under the Deccan traps?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
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The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
....greenhouse gas belching transportation for Diplodoci.
Now I know where the dinosaurs went.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
.. television is hiding the true emotions of these animals! .. oh well bother..
Protect the dino now before it is
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You obviously have not been following the
forthcoming GAGO controversy, have you?
6000 years all condensed into one day.
Well.. you will!
GOD BLESS!
They're roughly 180 degrees apart, according to my highly placed sources (I dimly remember seeing something about this on Discovery Channel), and approximately coeval. Plus, IIRC, 300K is only about 0.46% of 65M, presumably within MOE.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
We all know that the dinosaurs went extinct around 5,000 years ago after they began handing out free birth control to the reptilian students at Dino High.
He killed off that weasly little bastard Adric by stranding him in a cargo ship the Cybermen took over and slammed it into the Earth to wipe out the dinosaurs.
He may have mass genocided the dinosaurs, but it was worth it to kill off "the original Weasly Crusher" Adric.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...