Deccan Map (IMAGE)
Caption
The researchers suggest that the Deccan Traps eruptions and the meteorite impact near present-day Chicxulub, Mexico, need to be considered together when studying and modeling the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. The main eruption phases for the Deccan Traps (in brown), which were once three times larger than France, began roughly 250,000 years before the extinction event, the researchers found. For the next 750,000 years, the volcanoes unleashed more than 1.1 million cubic kilometers (264,000 cubic miles) of lava, which comprised about 80-90 percent of the total volume of the Deccan Traps' lava flow. The amount of carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide the volcanoes poured out would have caused severe ecological fallout.
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Illustration by Matilda Luk, Office of Communications
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