Re: New Deccan Traps paper

[Mickey Rowe <rowe@psych.ucsb.edu>]

Honored person Tom Holtz tholtz@geol.umd.edu describes a paper about
Deccan Traps volcanism:

> Furthermore, they find that the paleomagnetism of most of these
> samples are reversed (contary to some previous studies), consistent
> with being in Chron 29R (the short magnetic reverse chron which
> brackets the K-T boundary).

which jumped out a bit at me since I just read:

Jin, Y. G., Wang, Y., Wang, W., Shang, Q. H., Cao, C. Q., and Erwin,
     D. H. (2000). "Pattern of Marine Mass Extinction Near the
     Permian-Triassic Boundary in South China", _Science_,
     289:432-436. 

That paper provides evidence that the Permo-Triassic extinction was
abrupt and coincident with the Siberian Trap volcanism.  The authors
clearly believe the P-T event was caused by the Siberian Trap episode.
They end the paper with the statement that the sudden extinction they
report could have been caused by an extra-terrestrial impact, but my
reading of their wording is that they think this possibility unlikely
(my guess is that they added their last statement in order to please a
reviewer).

-- 
Mickey Rowe     (rowe@psych.ucsb.edu)