Russia's Popigai Meteor Crash Linked to Eocene Mass Extinction

 

 

 

 We should no longer be too surprised.  In fact, it is way more reasonable to start with a major impact as causation.   It provides the immediate energy and after effects that any other process simply cannot.  Life itself is amazingly capable of working around even a real disaster.

 After all, the Pleistocene Nonconformity ended the Ice Age over twelve thousand years ago.  We have plenty of evidence that the menagerie itself though clearly decimated did manage to hang out in spots all over for thousands of years.  We have Mammoths into historical times on remote islands in
Siberia.

It is becoming clear that extinction needs a geological event that seriously alters climate as well.  Even then there will be Refugio able to hold survivors.

The Eocene did see a sharp worsening of the climate.  We just do not understand all the details yet.

Russia's Popigai Meteor Crash Linked to Mass Extinction

By Becky Oskin, Senior Writer   |   June 13, 2014 07:35am ET 

 A space rock that slammed into Earth some 33.7 million years ago not only took a gouge out of the planet but also may be linked to the Eocene mass extinction, scientists say.

 http://www.livescience.com/46312-popigai-crater-linked-eocene-mass-extinction.html

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — New evidence implicates one of Earth's biggest impact craters in a mass extinction that occurred 33.7 million years ago, according to research presented here Wednesday (June 11) at the annual Goldschmidt geochemistry conference.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles precisely dated rocks from beneath the Popigai impact crater in remote Siberia to the Eocene epoch mass extinction that occurred 33.7 million years ago. Popigai crater is one of the 10 biggest impact craters on Earth, and in 2012, Russian scientists claimed the crater harbors a gigantic industrial diamond deposit.

The new age, which is later than other estimates, means the Eocene extinction — long blamed on climate change — now has another prime suspect: an "impact winter." Meteorite blasts can trigger a deadly global chill by blanketing the Earth's atmosphere with tiny particles that reflect the sun's heat.