Jakarta –
About 66 million years ago, all dinosaur from non-avian species, extinct. Initially for decades, scientists believed that uncontrolled volcanism was the cause of Earth’s fifth mass extinction, known as the K-Pg extinction.
But in the late 1970s, petroleum miners discovered evidence of a large impact crater in Yucatan, Mexico, that coincided with the extinction. The theory of a powerful asteroid fall is widely accepted as the real cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs.
However, there are still those who still believe that volcanism was the main cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs. Well, in the latest research in the journal Science, computers suggest the answer.
It has long been known that during the end of the dinosaur era, Earth was a geologically active place. Prolonged volcanic activity releases large amounts of carbon dioxide and sulfur into the atmosphere, thereby affecting local and global climate.
However, it cannot be denied that at almost the same time, an asteroid with a width of at least 9 kilometers also hit Earth. The impact not only brought destruction to the surrounding area, including tsunamis, forest fires and acid rain, but threw thousands of tonnes of debris into the atmosphere which also triggered significant climate change.
“From the rock record, we know for sure that a meteor hit Earth at the end of the Cretaceous period, and we know that there was a very large volcanic eruption,” said Dr Susannah Maidment, principal researcher at the Natural History Museum.
“We also know that there was a mass extinction coinciding with these two events, in which 65% of the species on Earth, including non-bird dinosaurs, became extinct,” he said.
Now, a team from Dartmouth College is using artificial intelligence to try to determine the most likely cause of the dinosaur’s death. And the computer’s decision? Volcanoes are what caused the extinction.
A total of 128 computer processors ran about 300,000 scenarios to determine how certain environments recorded in the fossil record might have appeared. The results suggest that volcanic activity may have been responsible for the large fluctuations in atmospheric composition that led to the extinction.
The effects of climate change of relatively rapid warming followed by cooling cause species to be unable to adapt quickly enough and eventually become extinct. Additionally, high levels of sulfur in the atmosphere cause acid rain and ocean acidification, killing plants. With reduced vegetation, herbivores have difficulty surviving, as do carnivores.
However, even if the computer determines this, it cannot be denied that the impact of a large asteroid made the condition worse. As Dr Maidment points out, we may never know for sure what actually wiped out the dinosaurs.
Watch the video “A Peek at NASA’s Research Plans for Bennu Asteroid Samples”
(fyk/fay)
2023-10-05 22:45:56
#Searches #Dinosaurs #Extinction #Turns #Asteroid
