Researchers at Dartmouth University in the United States have suggested flood basalt areas as evidence that volcanic eruptions contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs. Flood basalt is a stepped topography formed by large volcanic eruptions. Courtesy of Brehin Keller
Analytical results support the claim that dinosaurs became extinct due to volcanic activity. It is noteworthy as a result of directly refuting the theory of dinosaur extinction due to an asteroid impact that has been raised so far.
A research team from Dartmouth University in the United States published the results of a study so far that there is a link between major volcanic eruptions and mass conversion of species in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) on September 12 (local time).
The cause of the extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period 66 million years ago has long been a controversial topic in paleontology. Representatively, the ‘asteroid impact theory’, which states that a comet or asteroid collided with the earth, causing rapid changes in the global environment and leading to mass destruction, and the ‘volcanic explosion theory’, which claimed that volcanic ash, dust, and gas caused rapid climate change due to a large-scale volcanic eruption, have been fiercely opposed.
The research team used the supercomputer ‘Dartverse Discovery Cluster’ to quantitatively analyze the association between volcanic eruptions and extinctions that are believed to have had a major impact on Earth. As a result, 4 out of 5 mass extinctions coincided with the formation of ‘flood basalt’, a large igneous rock formed by volcanic eruptions.
The large igneous rock is about 100,000 km3 It is evidence that there was a volcanic eruption that ejected more magma. Most of the past volcanic eruptions that the research team analyzed were 1 million km.3 It is known to have erupted a huge amount of lava.
To compare the magnitude and damage of past volcanic eruptions, you can analyze the time of the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, Washington, USA. The magma that erupted when the volcano erupted was 1 km.3However, 57 people were killed, 200 houses were destroyed, and property damage of 1 billion dollars (about 1.374.5 trillion won) was caused.
“There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions exacerbated the situation,” said Paul Len, professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley.
The research team speculates that a volcanic eruption in Siberia, Russia 252 million years ago and a volcanic eruption in Deccan, India 65 million years ago, covered the atmosphere with dust and toxic gases, causing the extinction of dinosaurs and other living things and causing long-term climate change. did.
The research team also analyzed the volcanic eruption events and the extent of damage according to the speed of lava erupting from the volcano, and found that the faster the eruption speed, the more areas were destroyed, leading to serious damage.
“It is difficult to determine whether a particular volcanic eruption caused a single mass extinction, but it is clear that volcanic activity played a role in the extinction,” said Brehin Keller, a professor of earth sciences at Dartmouth College.
The research team refutes the existing theory that dinosaurs became extinct due to an asteroid impact. The theory that an asteroid impact was the biggest cause of the extinction of dinosaurs has been accepted as orthodoxy. The greatest evidence was the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The 200-kilometer-long crater was created at the same time as three-quarters of the world’s flora and fauna became extinct.
“The discovery of the Chicxulub crater has shattered all other theories that explain the extinction of the dinosaurs, including the volcanic eruption theory,” said Professor Keller. It was not found,” he said.