[Rockhounds] Volcanoes or Asteroid? Debate Over Dinosaur Extinction Event

[Kreigh Tomaszewski]

To address the long-standing debate about whether a massive asteroid impact
or volcanic activity caused the extinction of dinosaurs and numerous other
species 66 million years ago, a team at Dartmouth College
<https://scitechdaily.com/tag/dartmouth-college/> took an innovative
approach — they removed scientists from the debate and let the computers
decide.

The researchers report in the journal *Science* 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 the
events and conditions that led to the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg)
extinction event that cleared the way for the ascendance of mammals,
including the primates that would lead to early humans.
https://scitechdaily.com/volcanoes-or-asteroid-ai-ends-debate-over-dinosaur-extinction-event/

The end-Cretaceous mass extinction was marked by both the Chicxulub impact
and the ongoing emplacement of the Deccan Traps flood basalt province. To
understand the mechanism of extinction, we must disentangle the timing,
duration, and intensity of volcanic and meteoritic environmental forcings.
In this study, we used a parallel Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to
invert for carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, export
productivity, and remineralization from 67 to 65 million years ago using
the LOSCAR (Long-term Ocean-atmosphere-Sediment CArbon cycle Reservoir)
model. Our results closely match observed and proxy data and suggest
decoupled CO2 and SO2 emissions, a two-step decline in export productivity
with a protracted recovery, and no clear volatile impulse at the boundary.
More broadly, our methods provide a potential path forward for efficient
parallel inversion of complex Earth system models.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh3875