New Lamont Study Ties Megavolcanoes to Pre-Dinosaur Mass Extinction

Scientists examining evidence across the world from New Jersey to North Africa say they have linked the abrupt disappearance of half of earth's species 200 million years ago to a precisely dated set of gigantic volcanic eruptions. The eruptions may have caused climate changes so sudden that many creatures were unable to adapt—possibly on a pace similar to that of human-influenced climate warming today. The extinction opened the way for dinosaurs to evolve and dominate the planet for the next 135 million years, before they, too, were wiped out in a later planetary cataclysm. Geologist Dennis Kent of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory drills into rocks near a layer where fossils of half the species of life on earth suddenly vanish, at 201,564,000 years ago. CLICK FOR A FULL BACKGROUND STORY. In recent years, many scientists have suggested that the so-called End-Triassic Extinction and at least four other known past die-offs were caused at least in part by mega-volcanism and resulting climate change. However, they were unable to tie deposits left by eruptions to biological crashes closely in time.