The end-Cretaceous mass extinction, which included the elimination of all non-avian dinosaurs, occurred after the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid and during a stretch of the Deccan Traps volcanism in western India. Although it is known that the impact is temporally linked to the extinction, the relative roles are hard to disentangle. To help resolve the scientific debate, researchers at Dartmouth College tried a new approach — they removed scientists from the debate and let computers decide. They developed a new modeling method powered by interconnected processors that can work through reams of geological and climate data without human input. They tasked nearly 130 processors with analyzing the fossil record in reverse to pinpoint events and conditions that led to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
About 66 million years ago, the end-Cretaceous extinction event eradicated roughly 75% of the animal and plant species on Earth, including whole groups like non-avian dinosaurs and ammonites.
Early theories attributing the event to volcanic eruptions have been eclipsed by the discovery of an impact crater in Mexico known as Chicxulub that was caused by a huge asteroid now thought to be primarily responsible for the extinction event.
The theories have begun to converge, however, as fossil evidence suggests a one-two punch unlike anything in Earth’s history: the asteroid may have slammed into a planet already reeling from the massive, extremely violent eruptions of volcanoes in the Deccan Traps.
But scientists still do not know — nor agree on — the extent to which each event contributed to the mass extinction.
So, Dartmouth College researchers Alexander Cox and Brenhin Keller decided to see what they would get if they let the code decide.
Their model suggested that the outpouring of climate-altering gases from the Deccan Traps alone could have been sufficient to trigger the global extinction.
The Deccan Traps had been erupting for roughly 300,000 years…
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