SIGHTINGS



Giant Planet-Wide
Methane Explosion
Theory Cited For
Dinosaur Demise
http://www .abcnews.go.com
11-18-99
 
 
LONDON (Reuters) - A vast methane firestorm ignited by a huge asteroid that hit the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago could have hastened the demise of dinosaurs on earth, New Scientist magazine said Wednesday.
 
Such an impact, the theory goes, would have sent shockwaves around the planet, possibly unleashing methane trapped in seabed sediment and setting the atmosphere ablaze.
 
"This could have contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs," Burton Hurdle of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, told the weekly science magazine.
 
Hurdle and his colleagues believe lightning in the atmosphere could have ignited the gas.
 
They suggest that vast quantities of rotting vegetation trapped in sediment far below sea level combined with water to form solid methane hydrates in the low temperature and high pressure environment.
 
"As further evidence, the researchers point to an earlier discovery of disruption in late Cretaceous sediments (about 65 million years ago), possibly due to methane release at Black Ridge off the coast of Florida," the magazine added.
 
Other scientists found the theory interesting but flawed.
 
"I think this idea is very intriguing," said Peter Schultz of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. "But I'm not sure even an impact this big would have liberated that amount of methane."
 
Evidence is mounting that it was an asteroid strike that led to the extinction of dinosaurs. One theory is that the impact of the asteroid kicked up dust clouds that blocked sunlight and plunged the planet into many years of continuous winter that the dinosaurs were physically unable to survive.





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