RE: More Than Meteor Killed the Dinos

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <tholtz@geol.umd.edu>]

> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]On Behalf Of
> Scott
>
> The Deccan traps, I
> realize, are pretty well nailed down to have begun a million years before
> the Chicxulub strike, but "pretty well nailed down" isn't the same as
> "absotively posilootly nailed down," is it?

The lowermost Deccan basalts are apparently magnetic normal (presumably C30n, 
although I suppose it might actually be C31n, which
would make them even older in the Late Maastrichtian...), while the K/T 
boundary is during C29r (a magnetically-reversed interval).
So minimally the Deccan Traps began erupting a few hundreds of thousands of 
years before the K/T boundary itself.

                Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
        Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Department of Geology           Director, Earth, Life & Time Program
University of Maryland          College Park Scholars
        Mailing Address:
                Building 237, Room 1117
                College Park, MD  20742

http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
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