Quanta Magazine has an interesting piece about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The article is an interview with Yale Paleontologist Pincelli Hull. Her principle sub-field of study is marine plankton fossils. In the interview, she discusses some new evidence that the full blame for the K-T extinction lies with the asteroid that struck the Yucatan peninsula about 66 million years ago. This new evidence comes from ocean cores and tracks temperature changes before and after the K-T boundary.
The last time the world was ending, two cataclysms aligned. On one side of the planet, a wayward asteroid dropped like a cartoon anvil, punching through the edge of the Yucatan Peninsula and penetrating deep into Earth’s crust. Around the same time — 66 million years ago — a million cubic kilometers of lava were in the process of bubbling up to the surface, releasing climate-altering carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere and forming what would become the Deccan Traps of modern-day India.
Rock layers around the world show what happened next. No dinosaurs besides the birds made it out. Neither did the squidlike ammonites that curled like rams’ horns, or marine reptiles including the plesiosaurs (Loch Ness conspiracies notwithstanding). But because of the close timing of the asteroid and the volcanism, geologists have spent years staking out increasingly acrimonious positions on which one deserves the blame for the ensuing carnage. In 2018, The Atlantic called the debate “The Nastiest Feud in Science.”
Until recently, Pincelli Hull kept out of the fray. In her subfield, marine plankton fossils, the impact was considered the obvious sole cause of what’s called the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction. Instead, she focused on understanding how life bounced back, not on what had almost snuffed it out. “There was a lot to be done without really ruffling any feathers,” said Hull, a paleontologist at Yale University.
