Double whammy link to extinctions By Paul Rincon
The chances that asteroid impacts and huge bouts of
volcanism coincide randomly to cause mass extinctions may be
greater than previously imagined.
UK researchers conducted statistical tests to determine the
probability of such catastrophic events happening at the
same time in Earth history.
They found massive releases of lava and space collisions
should have overlapped three times in the last 300
million years.
Details will be published in a future issue of the
geological journal Lithos.
The work has been done by Dr Rosalind White and Professor
Andy Saunders of the University of Leicester.
The probabilities they calculated assumed there was no
causal link between the two phenomena - that impacts from
space did not set off the volcanism.
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Posted by Robert Karl Stonjek.