Bitter, Challenging, and Weird

Do you know if there's any merit to this theory?

that theory has been largely discounted because the Deccan Traps erupted around a million years before the meteor hit, and yet we see no decrease in fossil diversity in this period like we would expect if this caused the great extinction. Chicxulub is still the reigning champ of abrupt end-times, I'm afraid.

but this is probably because, unlike the Siberian Traps that accelerated the end-Permian Great Dying, the Deccan Traps were relatively slow! they did release absolutely staggering amounts of magma, but spread out over a period of like 800,000 years or so. life more or less just went on around it, presumably dodging the enormous surface pools of lava and plumes of toxic gas.

however there is a significantly more terrifying theory out there now that suggests that the Deccan Traps DID play into the end-cretaceous extinction event.... because the Chicxulub Impactor rattled the entire planet so hard that it caused almost every volcano on earth to erupt at the same time, including the Traps.

so yeah! fuck!

That's not what happened. This image by Donald E. Davis is probably the best depiction I've seen:

This asteroid was huge and traveling at an incredible speed. It was about 10 km in diameter and moving at 20 km/second - maybe about 10 times faster than a bullet. It spawned tsunamis over 100 m tall and earthquakes likely at least 10 times as strong as any in recorded history - earthquakes that almost certainly lasted for days or longer and very well could have caused volcanic eruptions. It threw so much superheated rock into the atmosphere that later fell down on the earth that it caused wildfires over much of the surface of the globe.

All that debris and smoke in the atmosphere resulted in a thick, hazy, years-long "winter" that stopped surviving plants and algae from photosynthesizing and left surviving animals with little to eat. The ocean also acidified, killing off phytoplankton and other sea life, and acid rain fell across the globe, further damaging plants that were already starved for light. We tend to focus on the animals, but maybe about 50% of all plant species were killed, too, even though no major plant families were lost (plant families tend to be a lot more speciose than animal families).

Yes, the Deccan Traps were big, but nothing compared to the Chicxulub impact. Their peak activity doesn't line up too well with the known extinction event, either. It wasn't a bad hypothesis for what caused the K-Pg extinction, but the Chicxulub impact makes a lot more sense.

TW: Traumatic Animal Death (the descriptions are vivid enough that it will be upsetting, please take care if you are sensitive to such things)

There's also a two-part series on Nova about this, follow the link below to watch both for free (at least in the US). Again, trigger warning here for traumatic animal death (this originally aired in 2022 and I *still* vividly remember one bit from this series that gave me nightmares):

Do you know if there's any merit to this theory?

that theory has been largely discounted because the Deccan Traps erupted around a million years before the meteor hit, and yet we see no decrease in fossil diversity in this period like we would expect if this caused the great extinction. Chicxulub is still the reigning champ of abrupt end-times, I'm afraid.

but this is probably because, unlike the Siberian Traps that accelerated the end-Permian Great Dying, the Deccan Traps were relatively slow! they did release absolutely staggering amounts of magma, but spread out over a period of like 800,000 years or so. life more or less just went on around it, presumably dodging the enormous surface pools of lava and plumes of toxic gas.

however there is a significantly more terrifying theory out there now that suggests that the Deccan Traps DID play into the end-cretaceous extinction event.... because the Chicxulub Impactor rattled the entire planet so hard that it caused almost every volcano on earth to erupt at the same time, including the Traps.

so yeah! fuck!

That's not what happened. This image by Donald E. Davis is probably the best depiction I've seen:

This asteroid was huge and traveling at an incredible speed. It was about 10 km in diameter and moving at 20 km/second - maybe about 10 times faster than a bullet. It spawned tsunamis over 100 m tall and earthquakes likely at least 10 times as strong as any in recorded history - earthquakes that almost certainly lasted for days or longer and very well could have caused volcanic eruptions. It threw so much superheated rock into the atmosphere that later fell down on the earth that it caused wildfires over much of the surface of the globe.

All that debris and smoke in the atmosphere resulted in a thick, hazy, years-long "winter" that stopped surviving plants and algae from photosynthesizing and left surviving animals with little to eat. The ocean also acidified, killing off phytoplankton and other sea life, and acid rain fell across the globe, further damaging plants that were already starved for light. We tend to focus on the animals, but maybe about 50% of all plant species were killed, too, even though no major plant families were lost (plant families tend to be a lot more speciose than animal families).

Yes, the Deccan Traps were big, but nothing compared to the Chicxulub impact. Their peak activity doesn't line up too well with the known extinction event, either. It wasn't a bad hypothesis for what caused the K-Pg extinction, but the Chicxulub impact makes a lot more sense.

TW: Traumatic Animal Death (the descriptions are vivid enough that it will be upsetting, please take care if you are sensitive to such things)

There's also a two-part series on Nova about this, follow the link below to watch both for free (at least in the US). Again, trigger warning here for traumatic animal death (this originally aired in 2022 and I *still* vividly remember one bit from this series that gave me nightmares):

There is a small tangle in your yarn. Topologically you know it must be a slipknot; if you give it a good firm tug, it should come undone.