back to article Boffins: We know what KILLED the DINOS – and it wasn't just an asteroid

For decades, scientists have been arguing over what killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago – an asteroid or geological activity. Now it turns out both sides may be right. In 1981, scientist Luis Walter Alvarez proposed that a massive asteroid slammed into the Earth, causing large-scale damage and clouds of toxic chemicals …

  1. Charles Manning

    Naaah

    It was lack of state research grants,

    but more research is required.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: Naaah

      Shouldn't you be in prison for dissing our our honorable effort in Afghanistan?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Naaah

        What do I have to do to get that nice silver badge like you guys have? It sure isn't based on quality of commentardery so, come on, what is it?

        1. John McCallum
          Mushroom

          Re: Naaah

          Check out his/her number of posts by the time you read this, if you do, it will, most likely be over 12000 so just be an opinionated "cough" person .

        2. Steve Knox

          Re: Naaah

          Step 1. Stop commenting as AC. Anonymous comments don't count towards your comment tally:

          http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/01/register_comments_guidelines/#anon

          1. Slacker@work

            Re: Naaah

            ohhh that's how you get badges!

        3. Dodgy Geezer Silver badge

          Re: Naaah

          It's a recognition of past glories. Or, alternatively, a lot of drinks bought in the present for the Reg team.

          Much like the House of Lords...

  2. Old Handle
    Boffin

    Current Science

    Technically, isn't the correct answer "nothing, so far.", since birds are dinosaurs and still exist?

    1. Pompous Git Silver badge

      Re: Current Science

      Beat me to it. Have an upvote.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Current Science

      Pete?

      Is that you?

    3. Martin Budden Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: Current Science

      I still find it odd that modern birds are among the "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs, not the "bird-hipped" ones.

      Anyway, even a child can tell you that the "bird-hipped" dinosaurs also thrived right through the Plasticine epoch.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Current Science

        "I still find it odd that modern birds are among the "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs, not the "bird-hipped" ones."

        That's scientific progress for you. Taxonomy has only really started to become an exact science since DNA analysis. Unfortunately when you have to rely on paper books, issuing corrections becomes very difficult.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Current Science

          It's not even the "exact" science it claims to be in DNA. There are still vast canyons of assumptions and guesses posing as data.

          Though there is more data now than before. :)

  3. Clive Harris
    Happy

    Didn't they die off during the Platonic era, when they all decided to be "just good friends"?

  4. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Trollface

    Alternatively...

    VW emissions in the early Beetlozoic era?

    1. Martin Budden Silver badge

      Re: Alternatively...

      Oi! My car resembles that comment!

      (it is a 1959 Beetle)

      1. Frumious Bandersnatch

        Re: Alternatively...

        Oi! My car resembles that comment!

        And that joke is way older than your Beetle. Not that it's a bad one, mind.

  5. Winkypop Silver badge
    Joke

    Hang on, hang on!

    "66 million years ago" is that some commie Metric equivalent of 6,000 years?

  6. Your alien overlord - fear me

    Well known fact - the only thing the asteroid did was help split the Americas off Europe. There's a reason it was in the Cretinous Era !!!!

  7. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Holmes

    SCIENCE!

    In this rather old infographic from New Scientist the Deccan Traps event is marked with "probably no extinctions". I need a new infographic!

    1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: SCIENCE!

      The Random Downvoter strikes again!

      (Or maybe someone just really loves that old New Scientist infographic?)

      In my day, infographics were big folded-up sheets of paper glued into issues of National Geographic, and you could update them with a marker. I used to have a terrific one - probably hilariously inaccurate as a picture of current evidence these days - that showed historical relationships among ethnic groups in various parts of the world, with known episodes of divergence and interbreeding. As a kid I found it endlessly fascinating: "oh, so that's when the Mongols invaded Poland!". Today, when a million new infographics are churned out daily by interns with five minutes' Googlpedia browsing, they've lost their charm. Also these newfangled horseless carriages amirite?

  8. wolfetone Silver badge
    Alien

    Fools

    We all know it was aliens.

    1. ~mico
      Alien

      Re: Fools

      Oh man, that was one hell of a safari!

      1. Alien8n
        Alien

        Re: Fools

        It was a mistaken foray into time travel, we were farming the dinosaurs for meat and shipping it to the 25th century. By the time we'd realised that we'd culled too many dinosaurs and the 26th century liberals started complaining the only option was to drop a large chunk of martian moon onto the earth to cover up what we'd been doing. Unfortunately removing a moon from Mars required moving it and destroying it forming the asteroid belt at the same time. The knock on effect was to cause massive climate change to martian causing the martian atmosphere to evaporate till all that was left is what you see now. Oh well, no harm done :)

        1. Preston Munchensonton
          Pint

          Re: Fools

          @Alien8n

          Geez, Phil. Stay on your meds, damn it!

          1. Alien8n

            Re: Fools

            The whole plot was nearly revealed when that pesky Tharg did a documentary called Flesh in 2000AD. Thankfully it was mistaken as a work of fiction by the earth lets of the time.

        2. Marcelo Rodrigues
          Devil

          Re: Fools

          "It was a mistaken foray into time travel, we were farming the dinosaurs for meat and shipping it to the 25th century. By ..."

          I don't know what You are taking - but I want some! :P

  9. Alister

    Maybe I'm mis-remembering, but I thought this link had been posited before.

    I'm sure I remember reading that at the time of the Chicxulub impact, the Deccan Traps area would have been almost directly opposite on the other side of the Earth, and therefore were very likely to have been caused by the shockwave of the Chicxulub event - much like the exit wound from a bullet's impact.

    1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Yes, have seen it before. Also, I think Mercury has a feature like that.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        I think Mercury has a feature like that.

        It's been deprecated. Turned out to be a security hole.

    2. Efros

      There's also a proposed link to the Shiva crater off the west coast of India, the timing of which event seems to suggest it may have been a trigger for the Deccan Traps (brilliant name) to go boom much more aggressively.

    3. Artaxerxes

      Not alone, sure I'd seen this before. In the 80's it was the Asteroid, then in the 90's it was a changing climate due to volcanoes, now its a mix of both.

      As always in life, its a little from column a, a little from column b.

    4. Arthur the cat Silver badge

      "I'm sure I remember reading that at the time of the Chicxulub impact, the Deccan Traps area would have been almost directly opposite on the other side of the Earth,"

      I was told exactly the same thing by the geologist brought along to explain the interesting bits of Iceland to us when I went to see the annular eclipse of 2003 there. (Very strange looking north across the Arctic to watch an eclipse on the other side of the planet.)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

        So what lies at the other side of the Earth of the Ontong Java Eruption at the time of its eruption (and how long does it take for the magma plume to rise through the crust)?

        1. Steven Roper

          "So what lies at the other side of the Earth of the Ontong Java Eruption"

          The antipode of Java is Colombia and Venezuela, and I don't think there are any major impact craters there. However it doesn't follow that even if the Deccan super-eruption was triggered by an impact shockwave, that all super-eruptions are. If that were the case you'd also have to start wondering what was opposite the Yellowstone supervolcano (whose antipode is in the southern Indian Ocean near the French Southern & Antarctic Islands) and the New Zealand supervolcano (whose antipode is in Portugal.) So clearly while the Deccan supervolcano may have been influenced by the KT impactor, the others likely had different causes.

  10. Fun Fun

    Gigantic asteroid slams cause gigantic volcanism

    I propose, that when a big meteor hits hits earth and causes a major crater, that creates schokwaves that propagate throgh earth and focus at the other side. The power focused at the other side of the planet causes major local volcanism and magma upheaval.

    You see, that the Deccan traps are just at the opposite side of the earth than the meteorite hit spot on the Yacatan peninsula.

    Also, when you look at planet Mars, there is this peculiar point of ancient volcanism, Olympons mons, the biggest volcano of the solar system, created by upwelled magma. Just at the exact other side of the planet Mars is a huge impact site, that has clearly penetrated the crust of the planet in distant past.

    Big impacts cause big volcanism at the other side of the planet. Please sperad the word.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I'm not sure people are ready for the truth but here goes.

    God created earth and feeling quite pleased with himself had a vacation leaving his then young son JC in charge. When god got back he saw that JC had created dinosaurs to play with and promptly unleashed his wrath destroying all the dinosaurs saying to JC "Oh FFS how am I going to explain this one?"

    1. Alister

      "Oh FFS how am I going to explain this one?"

      "Quick, pass me that asteroid... No not that one, the big one over there"

      Heeeuuugh... CRASH!

      "Ha, that'll keep 'em guessing"

  12. h4rm0ny

    Carl Sagan.

    I'm just going to quote him: "The reason the dinosaurs are no longer here, is that they didn't have a Space program".

    1. Peter Ford

      Re: Carl Sagan.

      Surely the reason the dinosaurs aren't here is that they *did* have a space program: a very large-scale and successful one...

      1. John Robson Silver badge

        Re: Carl Sagan.

        Like the dolphins - So long and thanks for all the fish...

  13. Alan Brown Silver badge

    the thing about space

    Is that given along enough period, unimaginable coincidences occur.

    The Deccan Traps + Chicxulub combination scenario has been floating around for more than 20 years but normally the hypothesis is that the Traps had been poisoning off the ecosystem for a considerable period before the asteroid hit - there is evidence of declining biodiversity leading up to the KT extinction.

    Chicxulub wasn't a particularly large impact in the overall scheme of things and under normal circumstances wouldn't have caused mass extinctions. It's not even close to the scale of the impacts mentioned on Mars and Mercury - which would have sterilised the planet if they'd hit earth. The main reason it caused so much damage was that it hit a shallow sea == evaporated limestone (CO2 pulse) + similar amounts of water vapour - basically the worst possible place to be hit, got hit.

    I remain to be convinced that an impact this small could have triggered the Traps (This has been argued back and forth for decades too. The relative locations have been pointed out several times)

    1. John H Woods Silver badge

      Re: the thing about space

      "I remain to be convinced that an impact this small could have triggered the Traps" -- Alan Brown

      Whilst I agree the impact was 'small' compared to other events (e.g. the P-T) it was still in the top five known Earth impacts; around 100 million megatons TNT.

      For context, that's about about 20x the boom of that big chunk of SL-9 hitting Jupiter. It's about equivalent to 4,000 tonnes of matter->energy conversion or, if you want something more concrete, over ten thousand times the current global nuclear arsenal, which is over twenty million times the total explosive use of World War II (Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only 1% of the WWII explosive load).

      1. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: the thing about space

        "it was still in the top five known Earth impacts"

        Emphasis on known. We keep finding bigger and bigger old ones.

        If you look at the size of the crater on mars or the one on Mercury in relation to planetary size, you're talking about rocks at least an order of magnitude larger than the K-T impactor. The point being that when they get that large, they're planet-sterilizers - not just mass-extinction events.

        As for energy: A storm passing over the Southern Alps releases more energy in a couple of hours than the entire world's nuclear arsenal at the height of the cold war. It's all relative.

        The point remains that _something_ was already causing larger species to die off well before Chicxulub hit. The Deccan traps remain the most likely culprit for that, as well as for the long pause afterwards, but I feel it's unlikely that the eruptions were _caused_ by the impact.

        1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

          Re: the thing about space

          Everything is relative, yes we get it.

          but I feel

          Science has scant to do with stuff from Lucas Space Fantasy movies.

          A storm passing over the Southern Alps releases more energy in a couple of hours

          Numbers, dude. I want numbers.

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
      Paris Hilton

      Re: the thing about space

      "Chicxulub wasn't a particularly large impact in the overall scheme of things"

      What.

      Bullet hole is just the third from the top. Bronze medal.

  14. Jimboom

    pfff

    Can we please stop wasting time discussing how the dinosaurs died out already and focus on the real matter of bringing them back to life already! I want my real Jurassic park!

    Just think of the television show opportunities. Big BC brother where we see if the t-rex or the z list celebrities win the challenge and get to eat (the loser).

    Or My big fat Cretaceous Wedding!

  15. TRT Silver badge

    I thought the Deccan Traps were...

    thinking that guitar bands were on the way out when four lads from Liverpool turned up for an audition, and refusing to appoint women to engineering posts?

  16. John H Woods Silver badge

    Terminology:

    (Correction suggestion sent).

    "Tertiary" no longer has an official stratigraphic rank according to this pdf and the period immediately following the Cretaceous is the Paleogene, making the boundary in question the K-Pg. Doesn't sound as nice as KT but no point fighting it, unless you like Pluto-really-is-a-planet fights.

    1. AbnormalChunks

      Re: Terminology:

      The last two pages of that PDF are fantastic I'm always getting Eras, Periods and Epochs mixed up, have an upvote!

    2. Jagged
      Joke

      Re: Terminology:

      "unless you like Pluto-really-is-a-planet fights"

      - Who doesn't ?

    3. NomNomNom

      Re: Terminology:

      pluto's a dog

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I have it on very good authority...

    That it was Xenu and his atomic bombing of the volcanoes...

  18. MondoMan
    Childcatcher

    Luis Walter and Walter, too

    Just a shout out that Luis Walter's son, named Walter, was a co-proposer of the impact extinction theory. He's a geology professor at UC Berkeley.

  19. Ugotta B. Kiddingme
    Joke

    re: Luis Walter's son, named Walter

    Walter Walter?

    1. Baskitcaise
      Pint

      Re: re: Luis Walter's son, named Walter

      Walter Walter?

      Everywhere but not a drop to dlink?

      I will stick to beer thanks.

  20. Valarian

    Idea for a new sitcom

    Everybody Hates Adric.

    1. Steve Knox

      Re: Idea for a new sitcom

      Especially the Silurians.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yo dawg, I heard you like extinctions!

    So we put a lava eruption into your impact event so that you can extinct while you extinct!

  22. Florida1920
    Headmaster

    They died off because

    they didn't have a place to buy overpriced sugar-coated crap advertised as food. Sugar, the greatest discovery ever made by humans!

  23. earl grey
    Happy

    Pics, or it didn't happen

    Or better still, a playmobil visualization of the whole event.

  24. Tom 13

    Remember

    The Truth is Out There.

    But

    You can't handle The Truth!

    So be Excellent to each other.

  25. Howard Hanek

    Several Factors Responsible

    A breakdown of the planet's regulatory system where teeth and claw growth caused a wave of violence that loosened the fabric of reptilian society coupled with the unavailability of contraception and the soaring cost of reptilian education and healthcare lead to mass migrations causing the death of millions.

    It was a period of extreme social injustice that gave rise to the Reptilian Labour Party ending in mass extinction.

  26. John Crisp

    Unlucky for some

    Whatever happened you gotta feel sorry for the dinosaurs.

    Bit like London buses. Hang around for millions of years and then get a truck load all at the same time.

    Real bad luck whichever way you look at it :-)

  27. Old Used Programmer

    nitpick mode on...

    That's Luis AND Walter Alvarez (father and son team). The original paper in _Science_ was them plus Helen Michels and Frank Asaro.

    nitpick mode off

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    This thread iis clearly lacking CO2 AGW alarmists.

  29. Zmodem

    probably down to sulphur, killing off most big animals, not having enough oxygen to survive

  30. JJKing
    Coat

    ohhh that's how you get badges!

    Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges.

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    But.. But.. George Osbourne promised

    that hard-working dinosaurs would be better off after the impact...

  32. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It is interesting to note

    That had the mass extinction 65 million years ago been only slightly less severe the trend towards increasing brain volume and decreasing size could have led to a bipedal, tool using "dinosauroid" about 12.3MY ago which would then have become the dominant intelligent species on Earth.

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