Traps Erupting, Pangaea Breaking, and a Conclusion
Deccan Traps Erupt
- before the impact
- flood basalts in modern-day India
- up to 600,000 miles covered in lava
- acid rain (SO2), ozone depletion, global cooling (SO2), global warming (CO2), etc.
Pangaea Breaking Up
- many species already going extinct due to the breakup of the supercontinent
- continents move apart → sea level rises
Conclusion
- the Cretaceous biosphere was already stressed
- the impact was the final nail in the coffin
- this was also probably the causal factor in the extinction of the dinosaurs
Did the Dinosaurs Really Go Extinct?
- biologically, birds are descendants of dinosaurs
- example: the Cassowary bird the is bird that most closely resembles a dinosaur in today’s age
- crocodiles and alligators are also thought to be descendants of the dinosaurs
- the K/Pg extinction caused extinction of “non-avian” dinosaurs
How Concerned Should We Be?
- there doesn’t have to be a “mass extinction” event to be bad
- civilization killer → this is random and would probably only occur 1 in 1 million years
- we might kill our civilization on our own
- current extinction rate is 1000 times higher than the background rate
- if all threatened species become extinct by 2100, we would be in a mass extinction event
- within 240-540 years, magnitude would be comparable to past mass extinctions
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