Bad luck killed the dinosaurs
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023780
Above is an image that shows a three-dimensional reconstruction of the submerged Shiva crater at the Mumbai Offshore Basin—part of the western shelf of India—from different cross-sectional and geophysical data. The overlying strata and water were removed to show the morphology of the crater (credit: Sankar Chatterjee, Texas Tech University).
Chatterjee presented his latest findings on Shiva to the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon, on 18 October.The late era of the dinosaurs was a period in which volcanic activity was frequent and common, yet the dinosaurs were thriving until the two objects hit Earth.According to the Economist :
The picture that is emerging, then, is of a strange set of coincidences. First, two of the biggest impacts in history happened within 300,000 years of each otherâmdash;a geological eyeblink. Second, they coincided with one of the largest periods of vulcanicity in the past billion years. Third, one of them just happened to strike where these volcanoes were active. Or, to put it another way, what really killed the dinosaurs was a string of the most atrocious bad luck.
Related Links I am become Death, destroyer of worlds The Economist Dinosaurs ‘could have been wiped out by 25 mile wide meteor’ The Daily Telegraph Giant impact near India—not Mexico—may have doomed dinosaurs GSA The significance of the contemporaneous Shiva impact structure and Deccan volcanism at the KT boundary
