Not a catastrophe that took place 65 million years ago led to the massive disappearance of all living things, scientists are sure
It is believed that the clue about the mysterious mass death of dinosaurs and 65% of other species 65 million years ago contains the Chikhulub crater, which is located in Mexico. They tried to refute the theory in a study published today in The Journal of the Geological Society.
The crater, discovered in 1978 in the northern Yucatan region and measuring 180 km (112 mi) in diameter, is nothing more than a trace left after a massive extraterrestrial impact.
When the debris from this strike was found just below the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary, it was identified as a "smoking weapon" responsible for the extinction of almost all life 65 million years ago.
It was this event that witnessed the death of dinosaurs, along with other species of plants and animals.
However, many scientists disagreed on this theory.
The latest study, led by Gertha Keller of Princeton University in New Jersey and Terry Adatte of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, suggests that the Chikhulub event took place 300,000 years before the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary formed.
“Keller and colleagues continue to accumulate detailed stratigraphic information supporting new insights into the impact of the Chikhulubs and mass deaths in the late Cretaceous,” said Richard Lane, program director for the Earth Sciences Division of the National Science Foundation, which funded the study. “The two events cannot be linked..
From El Penon to elsewhere in Mexico, according to Keller, “we know that 4 to 9 meters of sediment formed 2 to 3 cm per millennium, years after the disaster. Mass extinction is noted in sediments above this level."
Proponents of the Chikkhulub impact theory argue that the impact traces of the crater and the evidence of extinction are located in the sedimentary layer far from each other due to the impact of an earthquake or tsunami that followed the asteroid's impact.
“The problem with interpreting a particular tsunami is,” Keller said, “that the sandstone complex was deposited over a long period of time, not an hour or a day.”
The study found that these sediments, separating the two events, were characteristic of a normal sedimentary process, with surviving burrows formed by creatures inhabiting the ocean floor, erosion and sediment transport, and no evidence of structural fluctuations.
Scientists have also found signs that Chikkhulub did not have a dramatic effect on the diversity of species that inhabit the planet.
“We found that Chikkhulub did not in any way affect any species of life,” Keller said.
This conclusion shouldn't come as a big surprise. None of the other large-scale extinctions of the living are associated, according to Hertha, with external impact, and no other craters have also caused significant extinctions.
As for the very reason that led to the death of all living things, Keller suggests that the cause of the extinction of species may be massive volcanic eruptions in India. Then huge amounts of dust and gases were released into the atmosphere, which may have eclipsed sunlight and caused the greenhouse effect.