Re: Suspicious impact craters and iridium layers?

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: +ACI-Dora Smith+ACI- +ADw-villandra+AEA-austin.rr.com+AD4-
Sent: Thursday, June 16, 2005 11:53 AM

+AD4- Good evidence supports both the impact theory, and the Indian traps 
+AD4- theory,
+AD4- of the end Cretaceous extinction.

Very often in science the longer one looks at a phenomenon, the more 
complicated it turns out to be. This doesn't seem to be the case here, 
however. The timing of the Deccan traps seems not to fit. In at least one 
place in India the K-Pg boundary lies in the sediments between two basalt 
flows. Perhaps more importantly, the episode of the biggest eruptions ended 
some 100,000 years before the boundary and thus before the mass extinction. 
It did have worldwide effects -- a slight rise in global temperature.
http://dml.cmnh.org/2003Dec/msg00092.html

+AD4- Can it be that more than one factor contributed to such a catastrophic
+AD4- extinction, and that the extinction itself took longer than one factor 
+AD4- would
+AD4- explain?     It really isn't inconsistent to think of it that way.

Of course not. But in +AF8-this+AF8- case the data argue against such complications. 
The Deccan traps don't have the right ages, and the mass extinction was 
very, very short.

+AD4- Also, the end Permian extinction has been shown to have taken an extremely
+AD4- long time to come about.   The environmental impacts of the catastrophes
+AD4- that caused it occurred in stages over a long period of time.    It wasn't
+AD4- just a meteor fell or whatever and the following year, everything was
+AD4- extinct.

Yes. But that's another story.