Dinos Doomed by Mega-Eruption, Not Meteor?

Oct. 26, 2007 -- New evidence dug from the shores of the Bay of Bengal supports the radical idea that it was a series of monumental volcanic eruptions that wiped out the dinosaurs, not a meteor impact in the Gulf of Mexico.

The largest of the massive Deccan Traps volcanic eruptions in west-central India sent basalt lava east across the continent and into the sea. There, near the town of Rajahmundry, an international team of geologists has found marine fossils deposited immediately atop the largest ancient lava flow there.

The fossils, which match those found elsewhere, are believed to be species that evolved just after the Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction 65.5 million years ago.

"We went to the Rajahmundry area because volcanic layers, called traps...are found in this area interbedded in shallow marine sediments that contain microfossils, which yield age control," explained geologist Gerta Keller of Princeton University. Keller and her colleagues will be presenting their new evidence Oct. 30 and 31 at the meeting of the Geological Society of America in Denver.

There are actually two traps at Rajahmundry, each containing up to four individual pulses of lava, she said. The lower trap represents 80 percent of the Deccan eruption. Thirty feet higher, above the fossilized remnants of a quiet shallow sea, the upper trap marks the finale of the entire volcanic episode, which came some 280,000 years after the mass extinction event.

The discovery confirms two important things, said Keller: First, that the most massive Deccan eruption and the K-T mass extinction happened at the same time. Second, that the later, final eruption is timed right to have slowed the recovery of many living things. This latter matter of the slow recovery has long been a mystery to paleontologists, she said.