Re: Theories on the extinction of dinosaurs

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 11/18/99 11:27:50 AM EST, sarima@ix.netcom.com writes:

<< Yep.  This is why the impact is included as *one* of the causes in all
 multicausal models. >>

Multicausal extinction theories suffer from the problem of having all the 
causes come together simultaneously all over the world to produce the 
extinction. As the number of causes goes up, the probability of this 
happening drops >way< down. On the other hand, even the asteroid impact 
theory is a multicausal theory, in the sense that something else going on in 
the world must have made the dinosaurs particularly vulnerable to an 
asteroid-impact extinction at the time that the impact happened. After all, 
there were other impacts in dinosaur history that did not have the 
devastating effect of the K-T impact (though they may have been responsible 
for some of the abrupt changes seen in the dinosaur fossil record).