title: Earth history. U-Pb geochronology of the Deccan Traps and relation to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction.
abstract: The Chicxulub asteroid impact (Mexico) and the eruption of the massive Deccan volcanic province (India) are two proposed causes of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, which includes the demise of nonavian dinosaurs. Despite widespread acceptance of the impact hypothesis, the lack of a high-resolution eruption timeline for the Deccan basalts has prevented full assessment of their relationship to the mass extinction. Here we apply uranium-lead (U-Pb) zircon geochronology to Deccan rocks and show that the main phase of eruptions initiated ~250,000 years before the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary and that >1.1 million cubic kilometers of basalt erupted in ~750,000 years. Our results are consistent with the hypothesis that the Deccan Traps contributed to the latest Cretaceous environmental change and biologic turnover that culminated in the marine and terrestrial mass extinctions.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. bschoene@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Blair
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Schoene
authors.affiliation: Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
authors.forename: Kyle M
authors.initials: KM
authors.lastname: Samperton
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Michael P
authors.initials: MP
authors.lastname: Eddy
authors.affiliation: Department of Geosciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA.
authors.forename: Gerta
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.affiliation: Institut des Sciences de la Terre (ISTE), Université de Lausanne, GEOPOLIS, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Thierry
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Adatte
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
authors.forename: Samuel A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Bowring
authors.affiliation: Department of Geology, Amravati University, Amravati, India.
authors.forename: Syed F R
authors.initials: SF
authors.lastname: Khadri
authors.affiliation: Institut des Sciences de la Terre (ISTE), Université de Lausanne, GEOPOLIS, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Gertsch
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D018534:Earth, Planet; D053476:Extinction, Biological; D007854:Lead; D017640:Silicates; D013997:Time Factors; D014501:Uranium; D018707:Volcanic Eruptions; D015040:Zirconium
chemical_list: D017640:Silicates; D007854:Lead; D014501:Uranium; C003784:zircon; D015040:Zirconium