Nowadays it's widely accepted that the reason dinosaurs went extinct can be entirely attributed to the asteroid that hit Earth approximately 66 million years ago. However, recent paleothological developments and research point that most of the damage that led to this extinction event could have been caused by something else. That something else happened about 800,000 years before the asteroid impact, and its location is the continent of India, which at that point in time was on the other side of the planet, on its way to crash into Asia.
India hosted the infamous Deccan traps - a volcanic region with a diameter of ~1,000km. And it slowly and deviously came to life. In the process of doing so, the traps started expelling roughly 10,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This amount is insignificant, compared to what we produce nowadays, but they were consistent and after half a million years of constant pollution, the levels were getting dangerously high.
About 300,000 years before the asteroid impact, the traps started spewing out vast amounts of lava. We're talking an absolute flood of lava, interrupted by powerful eruptions that spewed even more lava and toxic gasses in the atmosphere. India was devastated. It's now accepted that should the catastrophy have ended there, we would have probably still had large dinosaurs roaming the planet. But it didn't. In fact, it was about to get much, much worse.
After hundreds of thousands of years of constant emission of those toxic gasses, several things followed. First, the oceans got ~2°C (~35°F) hotter, and just as those aquatic ecosystems had a chance to adapt, the balance was disrupted heavily. Carbon dioxide from the volcanic emissions heated up the planet, but the other primary gas in the mix - sulfur dioxide - actually cooled it. So after the initial period of heating up, a period of cooling down occurred, and those fragile ecosystems just collapsed. Acid rain came down, and the CO2 was acidifying the oceans, killing all the plankton. Dead plankton meant a massive devastation of all ocean ecosystems, since they heavily rely on plankton for their nutritional needs, much like today.
And then ~50,000 years before the asteroid hit, the Deccan traps took things to the next level with even more massive eruptions, spewing out trillions of tons of toxic gas and lava for several thousand years. The eruption was so deep that the gasses expelled contained large amounts of mercury and hydrochloric acid which completely collapsed any remaining food chains and the dinosaurs that depended on them.
And then, like a big cosmic joke, on the other side of the world an asteroid ~10km in diameter smashed into the planet, delivering the final blow. After the impact, the Deccan traps continued expelling lava and gasses for another 800,000 years. Once things settled down, about 75% of all species on our planet were extinct.
The data we have points to an interesting conclusion. Out of the 5 massive extinction events we know, at least 4 were happening during a period of time where extreme volcanic activity was taking place. Here's a rough timeline:
And our planet still has such volcanic regions that, should they erupt in the same way, would cause similar (if not worse) destruction to us today. But the good news is that technology has developed enough to give us a warning potentially even millions of years before an eruption can happen.
What a sight it would have been, to see the planet in those states. The vast amount of destruction, and the irreversible extinction of species that had ruled the planet for millions of years.
Let's hope we never see such destruction firsthand.
India hosted the infamous Deccan traps - a volcanic region with a diameter of ~1,000km. And it slowly and deviously came to life. In the process of doing so, the traps started expelling roughly 10,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. This amount is insignificant, compared to what we produce nowadays, but they were consistent and after half a million years of constant pollution, the levels were getting dangerously high.
About 300,000 years before the asteroid impact, the traps started spewing out vast amounts of lava. We're talking an absolute flood of lava, interrupted by powerful eruptions that spewed even more lava and toxic gasses in the atmosphere. India was devastated. It's now accepted that should the catastrophy have ended there, we would have probably still had large dinosaurs roaming the planet. But it didn't. In fact, it was about to get much, much worse.
After hundreds of thousands of years of constant emission of those toxic gasses, several things followed. First, the oceans got ~2°C (~35°F) hotter, and just as those aquatic ecosystems had a chance to adapt, the balance was disrupted heavily. Carbon dioxide from the volcanic emissions heated up the planet, but the other primary gas in the mix - sulfur dioxide - actually cooled it. So after the initial period of heating up, a period of cooling down occurred, and those fragile ecosystems just collapsed. Acid rain came down, and the CO2 was acidifying the oceans, killing all the plankton. Dead plankton meant a massive devastation of all ocean ecosystems, since they heavily rely on plankton for their nutritional needs, much like today.
And then ~50,000 years before the asteroid hit, the Deccan traps took things to the next level with even more massive eruptions, spewing out trillions of tons of toxic gas and lava for several thousand years. The eruption was so deep that the gasses expelled contained large amounts of mercury and hydrochloric acid which completely collapsed any remaining food chains and the dinosaurs that depended on them.
And then, like a big cosmic joke, on the other side of the world an asteroid ~10km in diameter smashed into the planet, delivering the final blow. After the impact, the Deccan traps continued expelling lava and gasses for another 800,000 years. Once things settled down, about 75% of all species on our planet were extinct.
The data we have points to an interesting conclusion. Out of the 5 massive extinction events we know, at least 4 were happening during a period of time where extreme volcanic activity was taking place. Here's a rough timeline:
- Devonian extinction event (~372 million years ago, ~75% of species extinct) - Kola-Dnieper Provinces eruptions
- Permian extinction event (~252 million years ago, ~95% of species extinct) - Siberian Traps eruptions
- Triassic extinction event (~201 million years ago, ~80% of species extinct) - Central Atlantic Magmatic Province eruptions
- Cretacious extinction event (~66 million years ago, ~75% of species extinct) - Deccan Traps eruptions
And our planet still has such volcanic regions that, should they erupt in the same way, would cause similar (if not worse) destruction to us today. But the good news is that technology has developed enough to give us a warning potentially even millions of years before an eruption can happen.
What a sight it would have been, to see the planet in those states. The vast amount of destruction, and the irreversible extinction of species that had ruled the planet for millions of years.
Let's hope we never see such destruction firsthand.
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Indeed, KG's latest video inspired me to look further into this. You're absolutely right that the asteroid theory was treated like a magic bullet because it's easy to treat it that way. But as we all know, it's never quite so simple in nature. Even though the overarching patterns in nature may appear simplistic, it's the connections between them that make the overall complexity skyrocket beyond our wildest understanding.
