Asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, study finds

[Admin]

An asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, a new study finds.

Asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, study finds : Read more

 

[Helio]

I vaguely recall seeing that the time frame for this volcanic hypothesis was found wanting as well.

 

[sciguybm]

That's the funny thing about trying to hypothesize about the past; who knows? Why: no one knows.
So let's try this one for size; asteroid, volcanoes cool the earth, not much, a few degrees. The impact crater isn't large enough to cause an extinction event.
In the cooling, a new enemy emerges: mammals. At night they roam the planet growing larger as they feed on dinosaur eggs by the trillions... mama dino too stiff to defend the nest.
So how come some dinosaurs survived? Look at their nesting habits and figure it out.
But OH NO; we CAN'T blame the mammals because then it is one one small step to blaming the humans for this extinction event happening today.
Besides, I offer for proof that many dinosaurs had already become extinct before this event and many survived this event by millions of years.
To think: someone actually pays the lizard brains who wrote and collaborated on this junk.

 

[slingledude]

Really? 66 million years? Just how do they come up with that number!? Besides, the world has been in existence for just about 6,000 years.

 

[COLGeek]

Really? 66 million years? Just how do they come up with that number!? Besides, the world has been in existence for just about 6,000 years.

What is the 6000 years based on?

 

[capetonian]

Really? 66 million years? Just how do they come up with that number!? Besides, the world has been in existence for just about 6,000 years.

Are you being funny, or <<edited by moderator>>...?

 

[dfjchem721]

Really? 66 million years? Just how do they come up with that number!? Besides, the world has been in existence for just about 6,000 years.

The date was established by the argon-argon technique*. It is very precise and is now widely accepted by most in the the dating sciences.**


* https://phys.org/news/2013-02-precise-dates-comet-asteroid-impact.html


** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon-argon_dating


One of the most important and accurate dating techniques, when appropriate, is established by U-238 decay***, the gold standard for "long" events. U-238 decay has specific daughter elements that must arise from the parent decay.

Since the daughter elements have only one source, the decay can be accurately established based on the half life of U-238 (4.5 billion years). Of course the objects being analyzed must not have this decay "clock" reset by melts, etc. That is why zircon crystals are used in many cases for really ancient events.

And there were relatively advanced civilizations in the middle east well over 6,000 years ago. Carbon dating (C14 decay) is good for those artifacts.


*** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium–lead_dating

And there is nothing wrong with being funny, well, sometimes maybe there is........

 

[PatB]

An asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, a new study finds.

Asteroid impact, not volcanic activity, killed the dinosaurs, study finds : Read more

An asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Woah! What if those incredible dinosaures were part of an incredible machination of the Establishment, one amid many others.

 

[Grthinker]

This is SO OLD NEWS!!!. We've known about that crater off the north shore of South American for .... at least a decade.

 

[YetAnotherBob]

That's the funny thing about trying to hypothesize about the past; who knows? Why: no one knows.
So let's try this one for size; asteroid, volcanoes cool the earth, not much, a few degrees. The impact crater isn't large enough to cause an extinction event.
In the cooling, a new enemy emerges: mammals. At night they roam the planet growing larger as they feed on dinosaur eggs by the trillions... mama dino too stiff to defend the nest.
So how come some dinosaurs survived? Look at their nesting habits and figure it out.
But OH NO; we CAN'T blame the mammals because then it is one one small step to blaming the humans for this extinction event happening today.
Besides, I offer for proof that many dinosaurs had already become extinct before this event and many survived this event by millions of years.
To think: someone actually pays the lizard brains who wrote and collaborated on this junk.

One problem here for your idea is that mammals are as old as the dinosaurs. Yes, there were mice/rats/opossums and so forth all through the 'time of the dinosaurs'. we generally only find the teeth, but rodent teeth are there in abundance.

You have to then come up with a reason why after two hundred million years of never being a threat, suddenly there is a mammalian uprising. but there are other problems for your explanation as well. Why was it that so many tree species or fish species in the oceans vanished at precisely the same time, planet-wide? Were there rat scuba divers with bombs?
What the Article does is to document the resistance of the gradualist school of Darwinists to the idea of external catastrophe playing any role in the history of life. To put it flatly, the Darwinist adherence to their religion is against the science.
Catastrophe's happen.
To make matters worse, some planetary physicists have maintained that the large burst of volcanism afterwards was a result of the asteroid strike.

 

[Wally Mayo]

One problem here for your idea is that mammals are as old as the dinosaurs. Yes, there were mice/rats/opossums and so forth all through the 'time of the dinosaurs'. we generally only find the teeth, but rodent teeth are there in abundance.

You have to then come up with a reason why after two hundred million years of never being a threat, suddenly there is a mammalian uprising. but there are other problems for your explanation as well. Why was it that so many tree species or fish species in the oceans vanished at precisely the same time, planet-wide? Were there rat scuba divers with bombs?
What the Article does is to document the resistance of the gradualist school of Darwinists to the idea of external catastrophe playing any role in the history of life. To put it flatly, the Darwinist adherence to their religion is against the science.
Catastrophe's happen.
To make matters worse, some planetary physicists have maintained that the large burst of volcanism afterwards was a result of the asteroid strike.

Good response. Many people do not realize how detailed our knowledge is regarding geological/planetary history, including early faint sun, Theia collision, lack of oxygen until two main oxygenation events, five supercontinent episodes, 5-7 main near extinctions, one with near 95% of land and 70% of marine creatures.
The near extinctions do fly in the face of any old-style evolutionary picture of a nice steady and quiet methodical progression of creatures.
But, focusing on this article, it is well-known that severe asteroid events can cause a huge response in large scale volcanic activity, some so violent that enough magma in one episode of Siberian volcanes was enough to equivalently pave the surface of the earth 12-20' deep. This has happened more than once. So, while the impact alone could be sufficient, vulcanism alone could, too. So, it's hard to pull that apart, and really know which did the most damage.
It's not all as the public perceives. On dinosaurs, I have fun asking my science students which came first, ants or dinosaurs? The surprise answer is dinosaurs (though some other "insects" predate).

 

[sciguybm]

One problem here for your idea is that mammals are as old as the dinosaurs. Yes, there were mice/rats/opossums and so forth all through the 'time of the dinosaurs'. we generally only find the teeth, but rodent teeth are there in abundance.

You have to then come up with a reason why after two hundred million years of never being a threat, suddenly there is a mammalian uprising. but there are other problems for your explanation as well. Why was it that so many tree species or fish species in the oceans vanished at precisely the same time, planet-wide? Were there rat scuba divers with bombs?
What the Article does is to document the resistance of the gradualist school of Darwinists to the idea of external catastrophe playing any role in the history of life. To put it flatly, the Darwinist adherence to their religion is against the science.
Catastrophe's happen.
To make matters worse, some planetary physicists have maintained that the large burst of volcanism afterwards was a result of the asteroid strike.

I think I covered most of your points:
given the asteroid and the volcanic action cooling would occur. Major cooling. Evidence doesn't yet show an ice age however lowering the entire planet a few degrees C would surely be a hit to climate eco-niche plants and dinosaurs. But fossil evidence shows clearly that mammals were there in numbers enough to leave the teeth in most fossil dig areas for that period.
Cold nights would certainly slow most dinosaurs down leaving the warm bloods freer to move about. Plus the larger the reptile the harder to guard egg clutches from smaller night-time creatures.
Whole fossil finds of mammals in the time period around the strike found the mammals growing larger and larger teeth, obviously in response to thicker egg shell feeding and that clearly indicates that initially they fed on smaller items but evolved to the larger tooth in response to some stimuli and as I see it, that's the larger eggs that suddenly, due to the strike, gave them opportunity to attack large eggs.
Those same fossil records show the sizes of the mammals also were increasing.
The size of the Chicxulub crater is just not large enough to create an extinction event. Even given volcanic eruption the cooling would only be maybe 5C, maybe. Simulation showed 4-5C. But that's in a select region and averaged... tropical belts wouldn't be affected as much but temperate belts would drastically be affected.
The rise of the mammals in northern much colder climates would have forced competition of the evolving larger toothed mammals to move southern over a period and with larger size and armed with better egg opening ability, even with the warmer tropical climate, be a deadly force. This could take a million years and coincides with the late fossil finds that show many dinosaur species survived the K-Pg boundary physical event.
The nesting habits of the remaining surviving K-period living relics of today show that their nesting habits alone saved them from the mammalian threat.
This is the exact same evolution the end-Triassic event created. Exactly the same. One creature specie using a natural change to suddenly dominate.
I stand on my hypothesis.

 

[bolide]

This is SO OLD NEWS!!!. We've known about that crater off the north shore of South American for .... at least a decade.

Umm ... here's some news for you. The crater is not the "news." Try reading the article again. Or even just the headline.

 

[bolide]

One problem here for your idea is that mammals are as old as the dinosaurs. Yes, there were mice/rats/opossums and so forth all through the 'time of the dinosaurs'. we generally only find the teeth, but rodent teeth are there in abundance.

You have to then come up with a reason why after two hundred million years of never being a threat, suddenly there is a mammalian uprising. but there are other problems for your explanation as well. Why was it that so many tree species or fish species in the oceans vanished at precisely the same time, planet-wide? Were there rat scuba divers with bombs?
What the Article does is to document the resistance of the gradualist school of Darwinists to the idea of external catastrophe playing any role in the history of life. To put it flatly, the Darwinist adherence to their religion is against the science.
Catastrophe's happen.
To make matters worse, some planetary physicists have maintained that the large burst of volcanism afterwards was a result of the asteroid strike.

Slick little slide there from "the gradualist school of Darwinists" to "Darwinists." Not all "Darwinists" are gradualists.
Why is it problematic to think that the burst of volcanism was the result of the asteroid strike?

 

[sciguybm]

Umm ... here's some news for you. The crater is not the "news." Try reading the article again. Or even just the headline.

Try reading what I wrote again.... I'm working on a complete hypothesis, it HAS to include all the variables. All of them. The article didn't exclude the asteroid did it? It specifically centered on the K-Pg event. Yes? No?

 

[sciguybm]

Slick little slide there from "the gradualist school of Darwinists" to "Darwinists." Not all "Darwinists" are gradualists.
Why is it problematic to think that the burst of volcanism was the result of the asteroid strike?

Not at all an issue with asteroid causing volcanic reactions.... the issue I have is what really caused the total extinction. Basically total extinction of the dinosaurs being the operative issue. Asteroid alone? No. Asteroid + volcanoes? Maybe, not likely. Cooled earth from asteroid + volcanic action + mammals = K-Pg extinction event.
In my hypothesis the only difference without the asteroid & volcanic actions impact on the extinction would have been time.
The extinction would have happened anyway... mammals are much higher in the evolution chain... it was just WHEN it would finally have happened not IF it would have happened.

 

[dfjchem721]

The extinction (of dinosaurs) would have happened anyway... mammals are much higher in the evolution chain...

There are some who would disagree with the notion that "the extinction would have happened anyway... mammals are much higher in the evolution chain... .".

The Age of Reptiles, which went on for almost 200 million years, itself arose from a mass extinction event. The P/T extinction, more colorfully known as The Great Dying, wiped out almost all marine species and most land vertebrates. That event happened around 250 mya, and reset the "evolutionary pressure" in nearly all niches on the planet. It allowed the appearance of enormous reptilian species never seen before. They lasted for almost 200 mys before another extinction reset the evolutionary pressure, creating an environment for the Age of Mammals. A 200 million year reign strongly suggests they were so well embedded that only a major event would change such dominance. In such cases of dominant life forms, gradual changes in evolution are unlikely to give rise to a new age of alternate life forms. The duration of the dinosaurs offers direct evidence for this premise.

To be sure, from a purely physical capability, predatory dinosaurs were the apex species in the history of life on earth . They were not going anywhere without a major change in the story line, which of course occurred at the K/Pg event. Some catastrophic event, an impactor (+/- volcanism) wiped out the Age of Reptiles, resetting the stage for those furry little creatures to attain dominance over the world.

It is highly unlikely that mammals would have eventually arisen to dominant forms in the presence of all those reptilian predators. Evolution into the Age of Mammals required that they all disappear - very quickly - which they did.

And it is important to appreciate that ALL dinosaurs were wiped out in that event. There are no living dinosaurs today, despite what some dinophiles may tell you. Birds arose off the main reptilian trunk over 200 mya, independent of dinosaurs. Careful examination of the real data demonstrates this beyond doubt.

 

[Geomartian]

Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

C.S. Lewis — 'Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.'

At the K/T boundary Earth got pounded by multiple asteroid impacts some of which created flood basalts and volcanism.

The argument between asteroids and volcanoes causing extinctions is based on a false choice.

Asteroids with high velocities (>50 kilometers per second) can create volcanoes, impact plumes, and extinctions.

Chicxulub is a bright shiny impact crater from Big Oil’s vast database of interstellar and conventional impacts. Chicxulub was a lower velocity impact generating a large surface crater instead of an impact/mantle plume. Chicxulub was locally disastrous but not a global extinction event. It was also 200,000 years too early according to Gerta Keller.

Gerta Keller also found a significant glauconite layer (impact marker) in North Eastern Mexico at the K/T boundary.

There are massive black shale deposits (another impact marker) in the Western United States at the K/T boundary. This could point to an interstellar impact in Northeast Mexico at about the K/T boundary. The existence of Chicxulub was released to hide a nearby impact plume which would later burn a 50 km wide path across the Texas oil fields. Chicxulub was a little over 1000 miles away and was a good candidate (nearly right time, about the right place) to cover up a much more devasting impact plume nearby.

The Deccan Traps and the Maldives. Not the Reunion hot spot as the origin of the Deccan traps.

The Reunion hot spot appears to be on the wrong (African) tectonic plate. Shouldn’t it be on India’s tectonic plate?

The academic journals shredded and deleted all the reports they received connecting asteroids, impact plumes, and volcanoes. Scientists and geologists are not paranoid and they (usually) walked toward the light without suspecting a thing.

 

[Geomartian]

Yes, science can be murder.

 

[sciguybm]

There are some who would disagree with the notion that "the extinction would have happened anyway... mammals are much higher in the evolution chain... .".

The Age of Reptiles, which went on for almost 200 million years, itself arose from a mass extinction event. The P/T extinction, more colorfully known as The Great Dying, wiped out almost all marine species and most land vertebrates. That event happened around 250 mya, and reset the "evolutionary pressure" in nearly all niches on the planet. It allowed the appearance of enormous reptilian species never seen before. They lasted for almost 200 mys before another extinction reset the evolutionary pressure, creating an environment for the Age of Mammals. A 200 million year reign strongly suggests they were so well embedded that only a major event would change such dominance. In such cases of dominant life forms, gradual changes in evolution are unlikely to give rise to a new age of alternate life forms. The duration of the dinosaurs offers direct evidence for this premise.

To be sure, from a purely physical capability, predatory dinosaurs were the apex species in the history of life on earth . They were not going anywhere without a major change in the story line, which of course occurred at the K/Pg event. Some catastrophic event, an impactor (+/- volcanism) wiped out the Age of Reptiles, resetting the stage for those furry little creatures to attain dominance over the world.

It is highly unlikely that mammals would have eventually arisen to dominant forms in the presence of all those reptilian predators. Evolution into the Age of Mammals required that they all disappear - very quickly - which they did.

And it is important to appreciate that ALL dinosaurs were wiped out in that event. There are no living dinosaurs today, despite what some dinophiles may tell you. Birds arose off the main reptilian trunk over 200 mya, independent of dinosaurs. Careful examination of the real data demonstrates this beyond doubt.

Two suppositions I find troubling;
1. If ALL dinosaurs were wiped out, then why didn't ALL life get wiped out? Why not turtles? And alligators/crocodiles? Many fish species disappeared but not all fish species. Fossil evidence shows many dinosaurs already extinct at the time of impact and many survived millions of years after. Dinosaurs were land birthing.. so are turtles. Why not turtles? This is too big a hole to fill.

2. There have been 5 major extinction events. 3 are know to be caused by biological action. Even the P/T extinction is thought to be climate change; biological climate change. Which is supported by the long time frame of the extinction event. That makes it an evolutionary extinction event.

Humans have, either primarily or secondarily, essentially wiped out 85% of the earth's species. In less than 1 million years. Technically in less than 200,000 with the largest amount in the last 10,000. I'd say this is an evolutionary extinction event. Even with the natural ice ages. Even with natural global warming periods. We participated in all of it.
And took advantage of each natural event. We didn't cause the ice age, but we wiped out major species during it. Would you say that the ice age wiped out most, 90%, of the age of large mammals? Or did the humans?
My point exactly with the mammal-caused dinosaur extinction event.

We too often seek the BIG exciting event as a causal agent because the little dull evolutionary event doesn't get headline notoriety. No lecturing deal for someone who proves " mice killed the dinosaurs." (don't pick that literally please.)
All those dinosaurs? It HAD to be some BIG HUGE EXCITING WILD CRAZY SUPER_DUPER event.

 

[dfjchem721]

Two suppositions I find troubling;
1. If ALL dinosaurs were wiped out, then why didn't ALL life get wiped out?

2. There have been 5 major extinction events. 3 are know to be caused by biological action. Even the P/T extinction is thought to be climate change; biological climate change. Which is supported by the long time frame of the extinction event. That makes it an evolutionary extinction event.

All those dinosaurs? It HAD to be some BIG HUGE EXCITING WILD CRAZY SUPER_DUPER event.

Nearly all tetrapods weighing more than 25 kg were wiped out in the K/Pg event 66 mya. Why any given species survived is probably highly variable, and what niche they occupied. An analysis of all the various reasons for being a survivor vs. non-survivior would be very difficult to accomplish. Apex predators and dominant life forms are the first to go in an extinction event. Top of the food chain, most susceptible.

When one looks at the dinosaur extinction, some should be compelled to believe they had something in common that led them to be more susceptible to the environmental changes that occurred during the extinction event, however it occurred. Obviously many species have survived various extinction events, and the reasons are manifold. The dinosaurs clearly had an Achilles Heel for this event, and it surely had to be a super-duper event. And one that clearly happened, and very quickly.

The P/T event was most likely caused by a geological process involving extensive volcanism lasting for ca. 2 million years, precisely spanning the event ca. 252-250 mya. Mass extinction was caused by all of the volcanic ejecta and gases, dramatically changing the earth's biosphere for an extensive period. *

That the P/T event gave rise to the Age of Reptiles demonstrates how massive the changes must have been. However, they do not appear to be caused by "biological climate change", but by volcanic climate change,


* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

 

[bolide]

Try reading what I wrote again.... I'm working on a complete hypothesis, it HAS to include all the variables. All of them. The article didn't exclude the asteroid did it? It specifically centered on the K-Pg event. Yes? No?

My reply was to Grthinker, not to you.

 

[Geomartian]

Logically speaking an evolutionary extinction is extremely limited. Small mammals are just variety on the menu and not an existential threat to dinosaurs. Dinosaurs were perfectly adapted to the conditions before the impacts. If an animal has existed in a niche for over 100 million years then incremental evolution has made it nearly perfect. Evolution favored the dinosaurs until the impacts and the vulcanism that they generated. A mammal had no chance of increasing in size and moving up through the ecological niches until those niches were depopulated.

Evolution does not cause mass extinctions (with an exception). Almost all of the survivors from the K/T extinction were of moderate to small size and usually extremely numerous (more numbers, more dumb luck). Dinosaurs were warm blooded and required more food than cold blooded crocodiles and turtles. Dinosaurs also appear to grow up very quickly. Even young dinosaur individuals needed vast amounts of food. Food density worldwide dropped below the threshold which could sustain any kind of dinosaur.

Early on the scientists tried to scapegoat flowering plants for the demise of the dinosaurs.

An extinction event by the rise of a sapient tool using species is not very likely if that species is a non-predator.

Cthulhu help the world if cats ever become sapient tool users.