Re: Mystery of Mass Extinctions Is No Longer Murky

[Erik Boehm <erikboehm07@yahoo.com>]

[sarcasm] but... but....

I thought all major extinctions could be explained cosmologically, such as 
periodically passing through areas of high levels of asteroids/meteors, or the 
even grander cosmic scale, with our position in the galaxy periodically causing 
extinctions - something about being on the wrong side of the plane and exposed 
to too much cosmic radiation or something. [/sarcasm]

speaking in terms of diversity, are we not in a mass extinction event now - 
human caused?
While some phenomenon may explain multiple extinctions, to pretend there is 
one, and only one, cause of mass extinctions seems ridiculous.


--- On Tue, 7/1/08, Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au> wrote:

> From: Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>
> Subject: Re: Mystery of Mass Extinctions Is No Longer Murky
> To: "'DML Dinosaur Mailing List'" <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Date: Tuesday, July 1, 2008, 4:40 PM
> john hunt writes: 
> 
> > Why oh why are papers still being written as if there
> could be a proven
> > single cause of mass extinctions.  All the excellent
> work on the
> > Permian-Triassic by Ward, Erwin and Benton shows a
> multitude of causes and
> > all the competing theories on the KT will all have
> played a greater or less
> > part in the event.
> 
> You have to admire the nonsensical subject heading though
> (I assume it came 
> straight from the media report). If the mystery is no
> longer 'murky', does 
> that mean it is now a 'clear' mystery? 
> 
> ___________________________________________________________________
> 
> 
> Dann Pigdon
> GIS / Archaeologist             
> http://geo_cities.com/dannsdinosaurs
> Melbourne, Australia            
> http://heretichides.soffiles.com
> ___________________________________________________________________