There is a very interesting new theory on the major Continental Flood Basalt (CFB) events or outflows, of which the Drakensberg is one, giant meteorite impacts (GMI) and the mass extinction (ME) events, the most famous being, of course the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 mya. The debate has always been, impact or volcano? Flood Basalts can be shown for ALL the Major Extinctions, and Impacts for most of them. CFBs occur every 30-35 myi (million year interval) with surprising regularity, the reason is not known. The Alvarez team fingered the impact crater at Chicxulub (“Chikshooloob”) in the Yucatan, Mexico, and since then, prevailing theory is that this giant meteorite impact did the dirty deed. However, there is the bothersome CFB of the Deccan Traps in India, which are the same age.
(Hollywood came out with a movie “Deep Impact” about how we humans are so nice to each other we will use nuclear bombs to save humanity from the next one. Of course, it fails and the rich (“big”) humans turn out not to be so nice to poor (“small”) ones, rather like dinosaurs.)
The dichotomy of having both a Flood Basalt and a Giant Impact for 4 of the 6 latest Mass Extinctions means that statistically one must have caused the other. The one that most scientist chose, myself included, is that giant impacts caused the opening of the Earth and the Basalt outpourings. There are major problems with this interpretation, the biggest one being that for the KT extinction, the one that killed the dinosaurs, Mexico is not near India! I proposed MULTIPLE giant impacts, coming in waves, and there is accumulating evidence that this is indeed the case, but there would have to be a big one near India as well, but so far there is no evidence for this, and I hoped it would be forthcoming. I also proposed impacts at the antipode – that is, half way round the world from the Flood Basalt, but although this is plausible, and even most certainly correct in that pode-antipode pairs of craters and volcanoes are now well documented, the evidence for Continental Flood Basalts or especially India’s Deccan Traps simply never rolled in.
New, a more accurate, radioactive dating technique places the initiation of the Deccan Trap Basalt Flood in India BEFORE the Chicxulub impact, with a small but statistically significant time lead, possibly about 50 years. The number is a guess of low statistic confidence, but the time order of events is of high statistic confidence, that is, one can say with great confidence that Flood Basalt outpourings start first, and impacts come later, during the outpouring.
Anyone see the significance?
We do not know the details of how the extinctions take place, but we can now say for certain the CFBs are the major cause. The impact theory is not thrown out, it becomes part of the new theory. It must be a big part, because volcanoes cause global warming by CO2 emission, while impacts cause global cooling, and we KNOW that global cooling is the first effect of a Mass Extinction.
We think that the extinction events happen rapidly, possibly as rapidly as 10 years. The impact theory uses “nuclear winter” as an analogy – the sky darkens for 10 years, photosynthesis turns off, most significantly in the sea, where the food chain link is snapped at the first rung, sea levels drop (documented), continental shelf living space disappears, leading to mass Marine extinctions, nothing on land grows, it snows for 10 years, everything big on land starves, in the case of the KT extinction, only the small mammals and those able to fly survived.
But now we must add FIRST that giant outpourings of CO2, sulfur and ash filled the sky. One would expect global warming, but instead we have global cooling - the drop in sea level is well documented for all the Mass Extinctions, and this can only occur if the land locks up water as ice. So the "nuclear winter" theory must be dominant, even if briefly. I doubt it could have been dark for 10,000 years, the minimum time period of the CFB, so there must have been sudden cooling, followed by major warming, combined with sulfuric rains. Perhaps the sulfuric rains killed the trees (dinosaur restaurants) and most certainly the plants changed. It may have been a wet period, but may have been accompanied by desertification. These details still need to be filled-in.
But the impacts? How do CFBs cause impacts? The answer is surprising, but after all else is eliminated, Professor Holmes, what is left is almost certainly correct. The answer is that these impacts are NOT from giant meteors or asteroids. The Continental Flood Basalts are not so quiet. In fact, they are not quiet at all. Even though they seem quiet because of the horizontal layering, they are not. The answer is that CFBs are the most violent events on Earth. They are so violent, in fact, they shoot pieces of the Earth into space! These pieces are not from the surface, but from deep within the Mantle, and they erupt at rocket speeds, something like 10-20 km/s, or faster! Their tracks are still visible. They are, in SA, the vertical volcanic shafts loosely associated with the Drakensberg – the Kimberlite pipes! And, if they do not achieve escape velocity, these diamond-studded chunks come back, and hit the Earth, make big bang!
The name for these events is a Verneshot, after Jules Verne, who “predicted” them in his novel “Voyage To the Moon”.
So now you know that the Drakensberg Range is the Continental Flood Basalt event of 150 mya, it did indeed cause a Mass Extinction Event, at the end of the Jurassic (ie it is the Jurassic Park event!, knocked out TRex) and every Kimberlite Pipe is Verneshot.
I want to know, where did the Big Hole land (or sea)? I want to go get diamonds from there!
One thing missing though. There are diamonds found in India. There are none I know of found at Chicxulub. Yes, most of the crater is in the Caribbean. The rest is scattered in the jungle, probably concentrated in karst water holes. Anyone for an expedition?
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