INTERVIEW Paleontologist Jean Le Loeuff reacts to the publication of a study reconciling the two main theories about the extinction Mass of the late Tertiary …
Who had skin dinos? For dozens of years, two schools of thought: for some it is the gigantic meteorite fell off Mexico has slain them; for others, the culprit is looking to India in a vast region that experienced a very active volcanism. A study by the University of Berkeley researchers published Thursday in Science reconciles the two theses, asserting that the impact of the meteorite has resulted in increasing the Indian volcanic activity: the bowels of land and intruders from heaven would have combined to devastate everything. 20 Minutes asked what he thought the paleontologist Jean Le Loeuff, director of the Dinosaur Museum in Espéraza (Aude).
When we speak of the end of the dinosaurs, it is called what?
At the end of the Cretaceous, there are 66 million years, 75% of living species disappeared , small plankton to large marine reptiles. It is not just about dinosaurs, which have also not all disappeared: the birds, which evolved from dinosaurs, are still there
How much debate about the cause of the late. he was keen dinosaur?
The debate was very lively especially in the years 80 and 90, between the extinction of the dinosaurs defenders on some tens or hundreds of thousands of years, a result of a very important volcanism in India. The others defended a more brutal extinction, almost instantaneous, on only a few decades after the fall of a meteorite that caused a shutdown of photosynthesis and therefore the collapse of a large part of the chain food.
How the debate he ended?
The debate has calmed down over the past ten years. Attention everyone does not agree, but there is a consensus that the intense volcanism India caused a deterioration and weakening of ecosystems and that the meteorite struck the blow of grace. But in science, such a debate is never totally closed because we can have new hypotheses, new data. What has been very difficult to know is if volcanism occurred before or after.
Why is it important?
The asteroid and volcanism are both well and truly arrived. But have they done that coincide or one he has caused the other? To answer should be whether the extinction happened a few decades or a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years. We do not know yet, because we have not the tools to tell if a bone is old 66 million and a hundred thousand years, or 66 million and two hundred thousand years. The margin of error is at best a few hundred thousand years.
The study released Thursday did not she provides an answer?
It is an idea already issued there twenties, who at the time was considered totally improbable. The arguments now are they decisive? Hard to say. For paleontologists it does not change much, even if the subject is very interesting because the extinction of dinosaurs is something very unexpected. There were more and more diversity, and suddenly, it stopped, it’s a very brutal break. For us it is interesting to learn about the cause of this upheaval.
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