Volcanoes Killed Dinosaurs, Not Meteorite Scientist Argues

For many years now scientists had believed that it was an asteroid striking the earth that had caused the extinction of the dinosaurs .Now there is a big debate going on because a new study claims to have found evidence that a volcano wiped out the dinosaurs.

Off the coast of India, oil drillers discovered ancient lava-filled sediments that are buried nearly 2 miles below the ocean surface. The volcanic area was found in 2009 and is massive in size ,roughly the size of France.

According to this article by Live Science Volcanic activity in modern-day India, not an asteroid, may have killed the dinosaurs, according to a new study.

Tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification, the research suggests.

The findings, presented Wednesday (Dec. 5) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, are the latest volley in an ongoing debate over whether an asteroid or volcanism killed off the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago in the mass die-off known as the K-T extinction.