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Volcanoes did not kill the Dinosaurs

22 December 2024
Catastrophism, Geology

Another cracker at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/12/241218174832.htm … The Deccan Traps in India are massive volcanic outpouring of magma. They have, in the past, been proposed as an alternative cause for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Climate scientists from Utrecht and Manchester universities now say that although the initial impact of the volcanic outpouring led to a very cold period of climate, the effects had worn off thousands of years before the asteroid impact. Whether it was an asteroid, a rocky comet, or something smaller, is open to question but the authors are convinced it was the prime reason for the extinction event. However, looking at it from a catastrophist eyeball, this appears to be yet another case of uniformitarian dating of sedimentary layering causing a problem which doesn’t really exist – even though it gives academics the opportunity of advancing pet theories of their own above those of their rivals. It seems quite obvious that sediments were laid down quickly after the asteroid strike – and as it had broken apart into several pieces before striking the earth the sedment layering would have occurred quickly at different places across the globe. In other words, the impact and the Deccan Traps probably occurred at the very same moment in time. You only have to look at how quickly large layers of sediment were laid down during the eruption of Mount St Helens in relatively recent times to realise it probably occurred during the extinction event – but on a much more globally extent basis.

Later, we are told, the impact itself unleashed a chain of disasters, including landscape wildfires, earthquakes, tsunami waves, and a cosmic winter. The latter sounds very much like the volcanic climate cooling episode, and the tsunamis, we may note, would have been huge and themselves laid down heaps of sediment [and the broken bones of dinosaurs].

At https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/08/240807122705.htm … which has been posted on here earlier in the year. However, it is still worth reading again. There are, apparently, puzzling questions in plate tectonics science. How and why pieces of continental crust are able to gradually rise up to form topographic features, such as escarpments and plateaus. There are of course several theories as to how mountains, yet alone escarpment edges, can form in stable cratons. Some of them have a cosmic dimension. This research should be viewed as one opinion among several – but see also https://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/2024/08/scientists-uncover-hidden-forces-causing-continents-to-rise.page

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