Dinosaur Demise and the Deccan Traps

66 million years ago, a comet or asteroid collided with the Earth, with devastating results. Three-quarters of the species on the planet were extinguished, including the dinosaurs. But many scientists have long thought that wasn't the whole story. In fact, before the impact crater was discovered, and the giant impact confirmed, the most popular explanation for the extinction was that a tremendous period of volcanism, in what is now India, had precipitated the disaster. Now, new geological dating of that tremendous episode of volcanic activity, by Dr. Blair Schoene from the Department of Geosciences at Princeton University, suggests that the dinosaurs might have been facing a cataclysmic one-two punch of volcanism and cosmic impacts.