Recovering From A Mass Extinction

Science Daily ^ | 1-20-2008 | University of Bristol.

[gleeaikin]

I have always though that the Siberian Trapps may have flowed out of a giant meteor strike. I also had the same thought about the Deccan Trapps in India which were built at the time of the dinosaur extinction. There is some talk of a 400 by 600 mile?/km? crater in that area known as the Shiva crater.

[SunkenCiv]

Barren Siberia, Of All Places, May Be Original Home To Animal Life
Science News
adapted from materials by Univ of Florida
Thursday, April 8, 2004

UF's Joe Meert and KU's Bruce Lieberman concluded that precursors to modern continents began splitting off from a giant supercontinent at the South Pole about 580 million years ago, migrating north toward the equator for about 80 million years. The scientists' analysis suggests that a prominent theory holding that the continents moved far more rapidly is wrong. It also suggests that trilobites, the long-ago forbearers of crabs and lobsters, originated in present-day Siberia when it was a separate continent from Asia and located much farther south... Working independently, the UF and KU geologists each determined that the southern supercontinent began breaking up around 580 million years ago. The separate continents drifted northward toward the equator at about six inches per year, with this relatively rapid movement ending about 500 million years ago, they found... While six inches is fast by comparison to today's continental movement of speed of one to two inches per year, it is far slower than that proposed by another prominent theory on early continental movement. That theory, known to scientists as "inertial interchange true polar wander," held the continents rotated from the South Pole to the equator in a mere 15 million years from 523 million to 505 million years ago - meaning they moved at more than 25 inches per year - more than four times faster than what Lieberman and Meert found.