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

\