Did Oil Kill the Dinosaurs? | Hacker News Reader

Did Oil Kill the Dinosaurs?

newyorker.com

38 pointsanthotny17 comments

I think its strange that when theories about "What Killed the Dinosaurs" are presented, it's always framed as that theory was the only one in play. So far some of my favorites are:

1. Massive Firestorms caused by the impact

2. Dust causes Nuclear Winter scenario

3. Molten Glass Rain. Fine particles ejected into the upper atmosphere cool into glass beads, fall back down, superheat the atmosphere, and bake the surface.

And now oil soot cools the atmosphere. Why are these theories always exclusive. Multiple of these things could have happened, causing an initial massive die off from heat, and then a following slow die off caused by cooling.

It seems you didn't read the article. It talks about oil as a co-conspirator.

Interesting… So the asteroid set off all the built up underground oil, and that's what actually killed the dinosaurs?

So in theory by burning off all the oil we might actually be saving ourselves from death by asteroid?

Well, saving ourselves from the sooty part of death by asteroid, but not the acid-rain part. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.

Even if oil contributed to the larger mass extinction, the dinosaurs were dead within hours, not days. The impact alone would have heated the entire atmosphere to about the temperature of an oven.

Probably longer than that:

>The length of time taken for the extinction to occur is a controversial issue, because some theories about the extinction's causes require a rapid extinction over a relatively short period (from a few years to a few thousand years) while others require longer periods.[1]

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...

180 kilometers (110 miles) in diameter and 20 km (12 mi) in depth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater#Effects

World wide wildfires, followed by years of minimal sunlight. That would quickly kill most plant life, and 99+% of everything larger than a badger in the first year. Ocean life would be somewhat insulated from the effect and predators can survive on prey or other predators for a while. But, this is not something that got better in the first year.

PS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiva_crater is another contender, but it's almost to large.

Radiolab did an awesome puppet-show/episode on this topic.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYoqtBEzuiQ

Indeed, that's a pretty good accessible overview. Most people can't comprehend the amount of energy involved in such an impact, but it would have spelled doom for the vast majority of above ground animals. Literally roasting them alive and killing so many of them that even if a few got lucky and survived they wouldn't have been a viable species. As to the aftermath and the impact on all the other organisms, that's likely a much more complicated story which we still haven't worked the details out of.

Oil, the silent killer

Big Oil killed the dinosaurs.

I'd love to know the point of this article, but can't bear to wade through the waffle. Is this a print article reproduced online?

You could skip down to the paragraph beginning “Now, a paper just published in Scientific Reports…”

It’s only waffle if you know it already!

Read the last 4 of the 9 total paragraphs if you want a TL;DR.

That's not even where the summary begins, that's where the actual content starts. So many things are like a TV show where every episode consists mostly of "previously on" :/

> the sudden ignition of underground oil at the Yucatán impact site could have jetted into the upper atmosphere a mass of fine black carbon, also known as soot ... black carbon injected into the stratosphere would ... [act] as a long-lived sunshade that could abruptly cool Earth and inhibit photosynthesis over a period of years

http://www.nature.com/articles/srep28427

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