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A team of University of Rhode Island scientists and statisticians conducted a sophisticated quantitative analysis of a mass extinction that occurred 215 million years ago and found that the cause of the extinction was not an asteroid or climate change, as had previously been believed.

I understand anti-evolution people sometime. After all, if something that you've been told by science your entire life as fact is then upturned completely as a lie, it's bound to erode your faith in the practitioners of science.

For the rest of us, the knowledge that science is supposed to work that way doesn't always take away the sting of having been taught something purportedly wrong your whole life.

As in this case.
Asteroids are out and just normal deaths are in.

EDIT: sorry, forgot to attach the link. Thanks Hastur.
[today.uri.edu]

TheMiddleWay 8 May 27
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8 comments

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0

Cheer up, TheMiddleWay, you have not been taught a "lie" your whole life. The fossil record shows that the last great extinction of 65 million years ago (the one that killed off the dinosaurs), is almost exactly aligned with the date of an asteroid impact, so it's generally accepted that the impact was the prime factor in that extinction. The extinction discussed in the U.R.I paper was not one of the five "great" extinctions that have been identified, but rather of one of several dozen smaller episodes that occurred in between the big ones.
In this case, there was an impact event that occurred about the same time (215 MYA), but close analysis of the fossil data showed that the extinction started prior to the impact and continued on well after it, so it was concluded that the impact was not the major cause of the extinction.

All of these extinction events appear to be tied in some way to climate change. Sometimes this is caused by an impact which creates a global dust cloud so thick that plants can't photosynthesize. Other times the culprit is volcanic activity that creates a greenhouse effect which both heats up and acidifies the oceans and starves living things of oxygen. The earth is currently in the midst of a mass extinction of the greenhouse effect variety, and it is widely accepted that the driving force is not volcanoes, human activity.

Anti-evolution people never let the facts get in their way, and frequently twist them to suit their purposes.

1

My only problem is, they are taking a "snapshot" of a specific area. What caused a die-off there is Not necessarily what caused a die-off in, say, Europe.
Example: Would anyone say a tornado in Kansesas caused a rash of deaths in a California mudslide?

@TheMiddleWay I am using Localized disasters as an example of how this study may be seriously flawed...thank you for emphasizing my point without having a clue.

@TheMiddleWay any study is always up for review or it is not valid!

0

This study used 'probabilistic estimates' and accepts that "not enough data collections from other sites", because they are tedius to come by.

I am not sure if this is a preprint article or has already gone through peer-peer scrutiny.

I hate to say that I don't trust, believe and should not practise science as the only real evidence-based approach in life. As, I know it.

2

K–Pg extinction was caused by the impact of a massive comet or asteroid 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) wide, 66 million years ago, this is not in dispute.
Stop trying to conflate two totally different extinction events.

4

This is interesting. While I’m open to changing our view on how we think things happened, it is just one study. Has this study been published to any journal for review? I’d be interested to know what other experts say about this as the subject is certainly not my expertise.

4

Science is dynamic, not static like dogma. As technology improves and the accuracy and precision improve, along with new or improved techniques, newly acquired data allows us as a Science Community to alter our understandings and change our minds. If it did not work that way, I would be disappointed.

Hear hear! All knowledge is provisional. Unlike science, orthodox religion remains locked in time, living fossils of their own interminable making.

2

they keep saying, carefully, asteroid IMPACT. it wasn't the impact that, pardon me, had the impact. as for the climate change, the asteroid impact resulted in a change of climate! and no, extinction would not have been immediate. it's not as if an asteroid fell on a particular species and squooshed it.

g

2

I had read that some in the field had doubts about the asteroid/climate extinction belief so this new evidence is pretty interesting. I guess I'd really perk up if they had found evidence of dinosaurs on the
Ark. 🙂

@Hastur LMAO!!!!! OTFLMAO!!

I would think finding "The Ark" would be more Earth shattering.

@phoenixone1 Which ark? Finding the boat is a fool's errand--Mount Ararat, are you kidding me? But the Ark of the Covenant is another legend to contemplate, with or without Indiana Jones.

@p-nullifidian the Ark of the Covenant is in Warehouse 13... 🙂 ... Loved that show...Eureka also

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