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The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, [a] also known as the K–T extinction, [b] was the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth [2] [3] approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs.
Luis Walter Alvarez, left, and his son Walter, right, at the K–T Boundary in Gubbio, Italy, 1981. The Alvarez hypothesis posits that the mass extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs and many other living things during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by the impact of a large asteroid on the Earth.
Summer: A poll of more than 600 paleontologists and other Earth scientists found 24% to support the impact hypothesis of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, 38% agreed that the impact occurred but was not the true cause of the mass extinction, 26% denied that any impact had occurred and 12% completely denied the occurrence of a mass ...
Paleogene: Eocene–Oligocene extinction event: 33.9 Ma: Multiple causes including global cooling, polar glaciation, falling sea levels, and the Popigai impactor [12] Cretaceous: Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event: 66 Ma Chicxulub impactor; the volcanism which resulted in the formation of the Deccan Traps may have contributed. [13]
By the time the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K/Pg, extinction event was over, about three-quarters of species alive at the time of impact had disappeared forever. ... slow loss of the leaves,” Baer ...
In a landmark paper published in 1982, Jack Sepkoski and David M. Raup identified five particular geological intervals with excessive diversity loss. [2] They were originally identified as outliers on a general trend of decreasing extinction rates during the Phanerozoic, [3] but as more stringent statistical tests have been applied to the accumulating data, it has been established that in the ...
Fern spikes cannot occur without ferns already existing in the area, so spikes occur primarily in regions where ferns are already a prominent part of the ecosystem. At the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, a fern spike occurred in the New Zealand area, where ferns made up 25% of plant abundance pre-extinction.
Kolbert explains that the main cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was not the impact of the asteroid itself. It was the dust created by the impact. The debris from the impact incinerated anything in its path. [20]