Mankind has always held a fascination for dinosaurs and wondered what the dinosaur extinction cause was, when these giant creatures were the king of the ecosystem more than 65 million years ago and were known to travel all over the Earth.
Now, a recent study by scientists at the University of California at Berkeley proposes that the existing theory of the dinosaur extinction cause being that of a giant asteroid hitting the Earth could have also caused a series of volcanic eruptions from volcanoes located in the Deccan Trapps region to add to the devastation that lead to the dinosaur extinction cause.
Lava Flow, Asteroid impact Dinosaur Extinction Cause Possibilities
The Deccan Traps are one of the largest areas of previous volcano activity on the Earth, covering more than 200,000 square miles of area and burying it under more than 6,500 feet of what is now volcanic rock, but was once molten lava.
Geologists use this example to show that lava flows flooding the Earth could have been a dinosaur extinction cause as it made its travel in the area, burying animals, plants, and everything in its path. The asteroid impact could have somehow caused this massive volcanic eruption, according to the study.
These Two Events Catalysts in Dinosaur Extinction Cause
These two events together are said to possibly be a dinosaur extinction cause due to not only the flow itself killing off the dinosaurs, but also the presence of toxic gases, lowering temperatures, and the forming of giant craters in the Earth, such as the one known to exist in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, the Chicxulub crater. These events could be some of the catalysts that caused 75 percent of life on Earth to die off in a recorded mass extinction event.
Scientists have found differences in the chemical makeup of the Deccan Traps lava samples from prior to the asteroid impact, to those studied that were from after it occurred. The evidence suggested to the researchers that the lava flow was set on fire by the asteroid hits, causing an estimated 9 point magnitude earthquake, thus contributing to the dinosaur extinction cause and the cause of many other species being killed off.
Additionally, the scientists found evidence that the Deccan Traps area of volcanoes had been in a period of inactivity prior to the time frame of the dinosaurs going extinct, and to the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid, which gives more credence to the current theory that the asteroid set off the massive lava travel flow, thus both events lead up to the dinosaur extinction cause.
The bottom line is that scientists will never know for sure what the dinosaur extinction cause really was, but this new study make the possible theory of both an asteroid hit and a massive flow of lava one of the leading examples of what may have killed off these massive creatures 65 million years ago.
