Unanswered Questions about the Cretaceous–Tertiary Extinction
As many readers know, I often don't subscribe to widely-held and regurgitated explanations for phenomena, especially if they are obviously incomplete and not internally self-consistent. In my opinion, any theory or hypothesis which requires you to believe it based on the authority of some alleged experts is no different from religion. Let us now turn our attention to the topic of this post, namely why conventional explanations for what happened during the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K-T) extinction event are incomplete, misleading and often based on dubious reasoning. But before we go there, let us restate what we know for certain about that topic.
First, the extinction event in question did occur and resulted in the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs, many large marine reptiles, pterosaurs and also a significant number of mammals and most groups of bird species. Second, it is almost certain that a comet or asteroid did hit the earth around that time. Some of you might ask, then where is the controversy? Isn't this the conventional explanation for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction.. you know.. a comet/asteroid hits earth and kills all dinosaurs, pterosaurs, large marine reptiles but not all mammals and birds, who then took over ecological niches left open by those extinct groups. As it turns out, a lot more interesting events was occurring on earth at that time.
1] While the most popular current explanation revolves around an comet/asteroid impact being the cause of that extinction- it is not without problems. For starters, there is a peculiar gap between the youngest dinosaur fossils found and the impact. To put it another way. there is a ‘3 meter gap’ between that iridium layer and point when the vast majority of last dinosaur fossils from fossil record about 100 to 200 thousand years before the asteroid impact. While a few fragmentary dinosaur fossils found in one single location are a bit closer to the asteroid impact layer, one such instance is not enough to definitively claim that the impact was the cause of K-T extinction. It also does not help that the four major extinctions before it were caused by extremely massive and prolonged volcanic events.
As luck would have it, one of largest events of that type in last 100 million years was going on at around the same time. The Deccan traps, a large igneous province in south-west India, started forming about 200-300 thousand years before the asteroid impact. It goes without saying that a volcanic outpouring which can cover over a million square km with a layer of lava about 2 km thick (original extent) would also pump out a shitload of gasses such as carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, rock dust and other types of particulate matters into the atmosphere. The pretense that such a large geological event did not contribute to the K-T extinction is, in my opinion, largely due to latent racism within the scientific community.
This become more obvious once you realize that the timing of this flood basalt deposition (which began 200-300 k years before impact) coincides with the loss of dinosaur from the fossil record in most parts of the world. And yes.. I am aware of more recent theories about how the impact could have caused or sped up the massive volcanic outpourings which formed Deccan traps. In any case, we cannot keep on pretending that the impact event (as defined by the iridium layer at end of K-T boundary) was the major, let alone only, cause of that extinction. The evidence simply does not back the impactor-only hypothesis and we are going to talk about it now.
2] Another problem with the impact-only hypothesis is that it doesn't explain certain peculiarities of the extinction pattern. Why did some birds survive the extinction, while non-avian dinosaurs did not? This question is far more complicated than it appears at first glance. Let me explain, most of you know that modern birds (descended from survivors of K-T event) evolved from theropod dinosaurs. But the relationship between the two is even closer than most realize. Tell me if the the following extinct dinosaurs (see below) look like birds or dinosaurs.. Eosinopteryx, Aurornis, Jinfengopteryx and Byronosaurus. Long story short, there are entire genera of dinosaur fossils which display features intermediate between classical dinosaurs and modern birds. The first three are from late Jurassic, while the fourth is from late Cretaceous. My point is that dinosaurs with significant bird-like characteristics existed alongside archaic and, later modern, birds for millions of years.
More importantly, many of them were in the same size and weight range as modern birds. To make matters more complicated there is the category of what are popularly known as 'archaic' birds which were closer to modern birds than dinosaurs, but did not survive the K-T extinction. And then are groups such as the Enantiornithes, who also did not survive that extinction. Or maybe some semi-birds, such as Qinornis, did. The point I am trying to make is as follows: the degree of shared genetics, physiology, size and habitat overlap of bird-like dinosaurs and "true" birds makes it very hard to explain why one group survived but the others did not. And guess what.. there were tons of small to medium-sized dinosaurs with beaks (and no teeth) similar in size to emus, ostriches and even large pheasants. Some of you might attribute this to the ability of true birds to fly better than bird-like dinosaurs.
Well.. in that case, how do you explain the simultaneous extinction of pterosaurs who were even more accomplished flyers than modern birds. While some of the late cretaceous species, such as Quetzalcoatlus and Hatzegopteryx were truly massive creatures capable of intercontinental flight, many others were of a size we today associate with large seabirds. They were an immensely successful order of flying "reptiles" which originated sometime during middle-to-late Triassic (over 200 million years ago) and kept going until the K-T extinction event. They even shared the skies with what we would today call "true" birds for over 60 million years. If the ability to fly was what supposedly saved birds, it clearly did not work for pterosaurs who were much better flyers. Also, even the late cretaceous had pterosaurs not much bigger than large ducks, so their complete disappearance is odd.
In the next part, I will go into why it is so odd that crocodilians survived the K-T event but Mosasaurs did not. And let us be clear about something else, not all of them were the 50-60 foot long creatures prominently displayed in documentaries about extinct species from the late cretaceous. Then there is the issue of why a decent number of mammalian species survived. While conventional explanations posit that they survived by being small, burrowing and being omnivorous- why do those factors not apply for small (chicken to dog-sized) omnivorous dinosaurs. And why did birds, who were far more exposed to the elements than either survive?
As you can see, our current understanding of the K-T extinction event is rather incomplete. We still don't have a proper understanding of what combination of factors caused it and why it is noticeably bigger than the previous Triasic-Jurrasic extinction. We also do not fully understand why mammals and "modern" birds survived (at least some of them) it, but small bird-like dinosaurs and so-called "archaic" birds did not.. well, most of them- at least. In the upcoming part, I hope to tackle the issue of how body weight may have affected survival. Spoiler.. it still does not explain why small dinosaurs, archaic birds and most small ornithurans became extinct while crocodilians did not. While I do not have any concrete answers, we could start by acknowledging that a good portion of our current theories and hypothesis about that famous extinction event are inadequate.
What do you think? Comments?