Love this stuff always have.
My dad told me, back in the late 50s, that the dinosaurs probably died by extreme vulcanism (pretty well read for a NYPD beat cop). Later it was determined that the big rock that hit chixulub caused the extinction. Now the pendulum swings back and we speak again of the Deccan Traps...huge lava flows... in western India as a probable cause along with the chixulub event in the Yucatan. And Paleontologist Bob Bakker thinks it was caused by disease brought across land bridges by the dinosaurs themselves.
All very interesting to me
LECTURE:
The Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction: What Really Killed the Dinosaurs?
Published on Mar 18, 2015
About 66 million years ago, 70 percent of all the species that existed at the time, including the non-avian dinosaurs, became extinct in an apocalypse widely thought to have been caused by a meteor or comet impact on Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula.
At approximately the same time, a series of volcanic eruptions in Western India produced torrents of lava that discharged large amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur gas into the atmosphere. Mark Richards reviews these remarkable events and explains a radical new theory suggesting they may be causally related. He also discusses how ongoing research is shedding new light on the true cause(s) of the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction.
Presented in collaboration with the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University
Recorded February 3, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNA_xct5JU
I was born and still live in NYC. And was once a geology major. Came one major-related course from completing my degree. Long story. :(