Hi, fellow Chicxulub scientist here. I’m happy to discuss the Deccan Traps if anyone wants to
It’s not unreasonable to investigate the Deccan Traps as the cause of the K-Pg mass extinction. After all, the biggest mass extinction in Earth history, the Permo-Triassic, was caused by flood basalt volcanism. But in the case of the K-Pg, the data very clearly support an impact
For example, the end Permian mass extinction was fairly slow geologically. Certain organisms went extinct first, then others. The oceans acidified and became anoxic. This all points to a relatively slow processes, like extensive volcanism.
The KPg was very fast. It was so fast that in the oceans the extinction only effected organisms living in the upper ocean. The deep sea was fairly unscathed. This means that whatever caused the extinction was over sooner than the mixing time of the ocean (~1000 years)
At the KPg, everything went extinct at exactly the same time. There were no precursor extinctions, nothing was in decline, it was just like switching off a light.
And, afterwards, the environmental effects cleared up within years. We’d expect the recovery of life to be delayed by continued Deccan volcanism but it began basically right away. (*Extremely citing myself voice* as we show here nature.com/articles/s4158…)
There’s actually a convincing case to be made for the idea that the proliferation of calcareous plankton made the planet resilient to major volcanic episodes like the Deccan: rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/371/16…
So, in conclusion, the Deccan Traps has nothing to do with the extinction or the recovery, and even if the asteroid did cause a pulse of volcanism (for which there’s no good evidence) it didn’t effect global recovery.
