Did dinosaur-killing asteroid trigger largest lava flows on Earth?

The asteroid that slammed into the ocean off Mexico 66 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs probably rang the Earth like a bell, triggering volcanic eruptions around the globe that may have contributed to the devastation, according to a team of UC Berkeley geophysicists. Mark Richards sampling a weathered zone between two lava flows of the Deccan Traps, near the town of Mahabeleshwar, India. These zones, locally called "red boles,” may represent periods of time elapsed between the eruption of successive gigantic lava flows. (Paul Renne photo) Specifically, the researchers argue that the impact likely triggered most of the immense eruptions of lava in India known as the Deccan Traps, explaining the "uncomfortably close" coincidence between the Deccan Traps eruptions and the impact, which has always cast doubt on the theory that the asteroid was the sole cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. "If you try to explain why the largest impact we know of in the last billion years happened within 100,000 years of these massive lava flows at Deccan.. the chances of that occurring at random are minuscule," said team leader Mark Richards, UC Berkeley professor of earth and planetary science. "It's not a very credible coincidence." Richards and his colleagues marshal evidence for their theory that the impact reignited the Deccan flood lavas in a paper to be published in  The Geological Society of America Bulletin , available online  today (April 30) in advance of publication.