Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid May Have Sparked the Largest Lava Flows on Earth

It turns out that the asteroid that slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago and killed off the dinosaurs probably rang our planet like a bell. The results were massive volcanic eruptions around the globe that may have contributed to the mass extinction event.

"If you try to explain why the largest impact we know of in the last billion years happened within 100,000 years of these massive lava flows at Decca...the chances of that occurring at random are miniscule," said Mark Richards, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It's not a very credible coincidence.

The scientists examined the remains of immense eruptions of lava that occurred in India, known as Deccan Traps. While the Deccan lava flows started before the impact, they erupted for several hundred thousand years after re-ignition. During that time period, they probably spewed immense amounts of carbon dioxide and other noxious, climate-modifying  gases into the atmosphere. It's still unclear if this contributed to the demise of most of life on Earth at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs.

Deccan lava from before the impact is actually chemically different from that after the impact. In fact, the lava after the impact indicates that there was a faster rise to the surface. The scientists also found that after the impact the pattern of dikes from which the supercharged lava flowed are more randomly oriented post-impact.

"This was an existing massive volcanic system that had been there probably several million years, and the impact gave this thing a shake and it mobilized a huge amount of magma over a short amount of time," said Richards. "The beauty of this theory is that it is very testable, because it predicts that you should have the impact and the beginning of the extinction, and within 100,000 years or so you should have these massive eruptions coming out, which is about how long it might take for the magma to reach the surface."

The findings are published in the Geological Society of America Bulletin.

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