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News: Did Gas Fires Kill Dinosaurs?
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- Subject: News: Did Gas Fires Kill Dinosaurs?
- From: "Louis Varricchio" <varricch@aero.und.edu>
- Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 11:14:41 -0600
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BBC News, 11/18/99
Fiery end for dinosaurs?
Scientists believe the entire atmosphere may have burned
The dinosaurs may have been wiped out in a gas-fuelled
firestorm, according to a new theory.
A "hell on Earth" may have been triggered by vast
quantities of trapped methane released from under the
ground by a comet.
A massive impact in the Gulf of
Mexico 65 million years ago is
thought to have changed the Earth's
climate and driven the dinosaurs to
extinction.
But a team of American oceanographers believe this is
only half the story.
They say the dinosaurs' end may have been even more
dramatic, as shock waves from the explosion released
highly flammable methane from within the Earth.
At the end of the Cretaceous
period huge amounts of the
gas, generated by rotting
vegetation, lay trapped in
sediments 500 metres below
sea level.
Bubbling up to the surface,
the methane would have
escaped into the air and
been ignited by lightning
bursts in the disturbed
atmosphere, say the
scientists.
Burton Hurdle, of the Naval Research Laboratory in
Washington DC, told New Scientist magazine: "The
atmosphere itself would have been on fire. This could
have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs."
Periodic escapes of gas
As evidence, the researchers point to an earlier
discovery of disruption in late Cretaceous sediments at
Black Ridge, off the coast of Florida, which may have
been due to methane release.
A smaller "blow-out" is
thought to have occurred in
the Gulf of Mexico during the
late Pleistocene epoch.
More recent activity on the
ocean floor suggests trapped
methane periodically
escapes even without
asteroid strikes.
Some scientists believe the
Bermuda Triangle
phenomenon could be
explained by methane
escaping and overwhelming passing ships or planes.
Dinosaur expert Dr Angela Milner, from the Natural
History Museum in London, said many dinosaurs appear
to have been in serious decline even before the impact.
But she agreed huge methane fires "could have been the
final straw" for some species.
LOUIS VARRICCHIO
Environmental Information Specialist &
Producer/Writer, "Our Changing Planet"
(Visit OCP-TV on the Web at: www.umac.org/ocp)
Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium
Odegard School of Aerospace Sciences
University of North Dakota
Grand Forks, N.D. 58202-9007 U.S.A.
Phone: 701-777-2482
Fax: 701-777-2940
E-mail: varricch@umac.org (in N.D.); morbius@together.net (in Vt.)
"Behind every man alive stand thirty ghosts, for that is the ratio by
which the dead outnumber the living. Since the dawn of time, a hundred
billion human beings have walked the planet Earth." -- Arthur C. Clarke
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