It ’s almost as if the macrocosm had it in for the dinosaurs ( dame apart ) . Even before the asteroid hit , tremendous volcanic irruption were changing the clime and fetch to an end the expectant beasts ' planetary dominance . Now , grounds has emerged that these eruptions were the result of two , rather than one , gigantic upwellings of magma , each of which alone would have altered the climate .
Towards the end of the Cretaceous geological era , volcanic eruptions unleashed astonishing quantities of lava in what is now central India to form the basalt responsibility make love as the Deccan Traps . Although the eructation have been assign to a plumage from the bass mantle , the details of how this occurred are not clear .
Many surface clue associate the eruptions with a hotspot that now lie under Reunion Island . Movement of the Indian continental plate has shifted the traps far to the north - eastward , but around 66 million geezerhood ago , the continent and hotspot were aline . However , attempts tomap currentswithin the Earth ’s mantle have found no sign of an upwelling at the appropriate positioning .
Dr Petar Glišovićof the Université du Québec à Montréal andDr Alessandro Forteof the University of Florida have modeled convection currents within the drapery , reversing the timing to start from modern conditions and going back 70 million years . They reason inSciencethat their method is more honest and fit with what we see in the geologic record .
Glišović and Forte ’s model expose a hot upwelling from deep in the curtain near the current positioning of Reunion , but added two other feature , which they come to to as “ feather - like anomalies ” .
One of these anomalies did n’t significantly go against the crust , but the other produced an upwelling near the site of the forward-looking - day Comores Islands . The authors suggest that this upwelling and the Reunion plumage both eat the Deccan traps , helping excuse why the basalt state is so with child . The combined core of the volcanic gasses give out from each author cooled the planet rapidly enough to make living difficult for less adaptable specie .
The plumage did n’t just halt once the turgid species were extinct . Instead , one lasted 30 million years and the other almost 50 , although for most of that sentence they were in the deep sea , India having left them in its wake .
Passage over the two plume have the Indian collection plate to lift and sink again , leaving a legacy in the Seychelles Plateau , which is raised far above the rest of the story of the Indian Ocean . Moreover , the remnants of the Reunion plume continue to chip in to drive India northwards , where its hit with Asia is forcing up the Himalayas .
