RE: Extinction scenarios

[John Bois <jbois@umd5.umd.edu>]

On Tue, 18 Aug 1998, Augustus T. White wrote:

> The fact remains that getting hit with a rock 
> kills rather unselectively.  Ecological succession, on the other hand, can 
> be a very finely tuned selector and can operate in a very short period of 
> time.  I don't know if this concept of the extinction can be crafted into a 
> testable hypothesis.  However, it is at least one reason not to asssume 
> that selectivity undercuts the astronomical explanation for the KT 
> extinction.

Very good.  But can you give us a more specific idea of what kind of
ecological succession you could be meaning.  Otherwise you just seem to be
heading toward the: "we don't know how it happened but there was a lot of
ecological turmoil caused, probably, by a variety of forces, biological
and physical (including the bolide) having unspecified effects."  Which is
to say, away from the bolide-as-sufficient idea!