[decimon]

The kids from Bristol are sharp as a pistol.

[decimon]

Russia rocks the gap ping.

[Constitution Day]

BTTT

[Boogieman]

I love how the other throws the “due to runaway global warming” line in there, as if that is the scientific consensus.

Wikipedia, however says: “There are several proposed mechanisms for the extinctions; the earlier peak was likely due to gradualistic environmental change, while the latter was probably due to a catastrophic event. Possible mechanisms for the latter include large or multiple bolide impact events, increased volcanism, or sudden release of methane hydrates from the sea floor; gradual changes include sea-level change, anoxia, increasing aridity,[10] and a shift in ocean circulation driven by climate change.”

Sounds like the debate is really over on this one too!

[silverleaf]

The interesting question is, have mass extinction events been periodic?

[highnoon]

Global Warming, Caveman Bush’s fault.

[An.American.Expatriate]

single mass extinction event

Is that when god hits the reset button?

[toomuchcoffee]

Darn! I thought this article was gonna be about senior adult dating.

[count-your-change]

I'm so happy this matter has been sorted out. Just last week while collecting me last pay packet (I was found to be redundant), I says to the wife,

“Wife, I can't sleep thinking about that Russian mass extinction and paying the electric”.

And she says,
“Solly, you're on the blue bottles. Worrying about electricity when 85 to 90% of life went blotto during the Pregnant-Triangular Age. You really needs to rationalize these things, you really do.”

I think the old girl is ready for her own Permanant-Tricycle Extinction. What does she know about stuff what happened when she was in nappies?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks decimon.

research was funded by the Natural Environmental Research Council...

What a huge surprise that the results were against impact extinction.

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[SunkenCiv]

Scientists Find Signs of Meteor Crash That Led to Extinctions in Era Before Dinosaurs
by Kenneth Chang
February 23, 2001

Dr. Becker, Dr. Poreda and their colleagues had previously found buckyballs at an impact crater in Sudbury, Canada, and in two meteorites. They have also found buckyballs containing similar types of gases in sediments dating from the dinosaur extinctions.

In the experiments, the scientists extracted buckyballs -- not just the typical sphere consisting of 60 carbon atoms, but also larger versions with up to 160 atoms -- from the sediments with organic solvents.

They then opened the buckyballs to release the helium and argon inside them. The nuclei of most helium atoms consist of two protons and two neutrons. A few -- one out of 700,000 helium atoms in the atmosphere -- are a lighter version, with only one neutron. For the helium in the buckyballs, a much larger fraction -- one out of 5,000 -- was the lighter version, similar to the ratio produced by fusion in stars.

The argon indicated a similar story, with low concentrations of a version that is commonly produced on Earth from the radioactive decay of potassium.

"I think the argon isotope ratio measurement is very convincing," said Dr. Kenneth A. Farley, a professor of geochemistry at the California Institute of Technology. "That's very hard to understand if it's not extraterrestrial."

[SunkenCiv]

PopSci for March 2004 (p 56) had a Dawn Stover piece on the Permian-Triassic extinction. She's got a table showing four possibilities and a summary of points for each, and also writes that "it's possible that more than theory is correct." A huge impact on water would send a shockwave throughout the oceans and seas, with the potential of releasing the methane in gas hydrates and the poisonous hydrogen sulfide gas that displaces oxygen in the depths. She ignores that likelier possibility and writes instead that an impact could trigger volcanic eruptions, "which in turn could have kicked off deadly acid rain showers."

The Suspect	The Theory	The Evidence	The Proponents	The Holes
Asteroid impact	A space rock strikes in the tropics, spews debris into the air and triggers lethal climate change	Scientists found 250 million year old rocks from Antarctica and China said to contain meteorite fragments	Researchers at the University of Rochester, Harvard, and UC Santa Barbara	Scientists have yet to find the ultimate smoking gun, a crater
Sudden methane explosion	A massive cloud of methane gas abruptly bursts from the ocean, cataclysmic flooding and fires ensue	Great Dying fossils show a sudden sharp rise in carbon-12 isotopes, best explained by a methane belch	Chemical engineer Gregory Ryskin at Northwestern University	The explosion requires an improbable 10,000 gigatons of methane
Slow methane leak	Volcanoes of frozen deposits leak methane over thousands of years, depleting oxygen	The burrowing reptile Lystrosaurus, adapted for low-oxygen conditions, thrived during this period	Researchers at the University of Oregon, the South African Museum, and the University of Washington	The leak could not deplete enought oxygen to cause global death, critics say
Hydrogen sulfide stink bomb	Lethal levels of hydrogen sulfide, emitted by anaerobic bacteria, are expelled from the ocean into the air	Proponents are searching for signs of sulfur bacteria in Japanese sediments dated to the extinction	Scientists at Penn State, the University of Colorado, and the University of Tokyo	There's no proof that the upper layers of ancient oceans were devoid of oxygen

My guess is, Dawn Stover went to Penn State and studied volcanology for a while. ;')

[SunkenCiv]