Battleangel

Reuters: What really killed the dinosaurs?

Ahh, this brings back memories. Not the crater itself but the field of science that it has become closely linked to. I.e. paleontology and the demise of the phylogenetic clade dinosauria. Well except for birds which are still alive and well.

Saw the report a couple of days ago but I felt it wasn’t such big news. I don’t think anyone expected the Chicxulub crater to be on time for the KT boundary.
It just points to the more or less well known fact that extinction isn’t as predictable as we think. Mainly so because the eradication of biological diversity that we see around us today is caused by the deliberate acts of humans. Not even a 10km rock from space could accomplish such a thing. Evolution and thus extinction has no soul and no mind.

This finding would support an alternative theory that the dinosaurs and other forms of life were wiped out in a series of disasters that changed the Earth’s climate, Keller’s team said.

They noted there are other craters dating to around this time. None is big enough to have caused world-altering changes by itself.

But the meteors or asteroids hit at the same time of a busy period of volcanic activity known as Deccan volcanism, as well as when greenhouse-type atmospheric warming and major extinctions occurred.

Kind of good news for us mammals, since we did survive the KT and evolved into the diverse clade that we are today. Given our use of technology, humans can be relatively certain to survive a similar chains of events. Even if the death toll would be great of course.
Now the search continues for impact crater two and three, which in conjunction with Chicxulub and the Deccan volcanism could possibly give the full explanation to the KT event.