Thursday, March 7, 2013

The Extinction

There are many theories on how the dinosaurs went extinct. Some theories are far-fetched such that aliens killed them,but the theories that a meteor or volcanic eruptions can be more scientifically proven.

    In the 1970's Walter Alverez discovered High levels of iridium in the Cretacious/Tertairy (K/T) boundary. Iridium is found in the the earth's core, but never in the mantel or crust. Meteors carry iridium. Shocked quartz, formed by high pressure , are found in the (K/T) boundary. Later a crater was found in the Yucaton Peninsula, showing that the meteor was approximately 10km wide. A meteor that size would have made shock waves of 100,000 billion sticks of dynamite.After the impact tiny bits of rocks are blasted into the sky, and fell back down heating up the sky causing forest fires. Also toxic waste was launched into the sky which blocked out the sun and killed all the plants and dinosaurs.

  There is some proof that a volcanic eruption killed the dinosaurs. The Decan Traps in India is a long chain of igneus rocks formed by a volcano or volcanos. There are still debates that lava could not kill all the dinosaurs. Some scientists said that a volcanic eruption can realease 33 trillion tons of corbon dioxcide, 6 trillion tons of sulfur, and 66 billion tons of flourine and chlorine gas, causing simular effects as a meteor.

  Although the meteor theory is accepted to be true there is one puzzling question: Why did some animals die and others didn't? I leave this question for you to awnswere.