Prolonged Climatic Stress Main Reason for Mass Extinction 65 Million Years Ago, Paleontologist Says

Long-term climate fluctuations were probably the main reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago. This conclusion was reached by PD Dr. Michael Prauss, paleontologist at Freie Universitaet Berlin, based on his latest research results.

Prauss thus challenges the almost 30-year-old theory that a meteorite impact at the Mexican Yucatan peninsula was the single cause for one of the five largest mass extinctions in Earth history, which has most recently been reiterated in a publication in the journal Science. According to Prauss, the impact was only one in a chain of catastrophic events that caused substantial environmental perturbations, probably largely controlled by the intermittent activity of the Deccan volcanism near the then-Indian continent, that continued over several million years and peaked at the Cretaceous-Paleogen boundary."The resulting chronic stress, to which of course the meteorite impact was a contributing factor, is likely to have been fundamental to the crisis in the biosphere and finally the mass extinction," says Michael Prauss

(Science Daily 03/27/2010)