GEOL 107 Lecture Notes - Lecture 26: Shocked Quartz, Volcanism, Deccan Traps
13 Nov 2017
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End of an era - the extinction of the dinosaurs: the terminal cretaceous event. End of the mesozoic (terminal cretaceous event) was a mass extinction event. Not the largest of all time (17% extinction at the family level makes it only the 5th largest in the. Phanerozoic and far behind the permian event; fig. Has captured the public interest in dinosaurs and their extinction. Terminal cretaceous event marked by extinctions of many groups in many environments. Marine: marine reptiles, ammonites, rudist bivalves, many microfossils. However the freshwater and plant realms seem to have escaped relatively unscathed. Over the past century literally hundreds of theories have been proposed for the extinction of the dinosaurs (ranging from mammals raiding their eggs to the evolution of hallucinogenic plants) Most can be rejected out of hand since they only account for the dinosaurs and cannot explain simultaneous extinctions among unrelated animal taxa in the sea, air and land.
