Volcano Eruptions Led to Rise of Dinosaurs

An explosion of volcanic activity 200 million years ago may have been responsible for the mass extinction that left dinosaurs with few competitors and allowed them to dominate the Earth for almost 150 million years. Researchers have discovered evidence of massive lava flows concurrent with elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. They surmise that the world was subject to “super” global warming.

“We're talking about a serious amount of the Earth being covered in lava,” the author tells the BBC. 50% of four-legged land animals, 50% of plants, and 20% of marine life were eliminated, including the dinosaurs' main competitor, the crurotarsans. “These events are synchronous with the extinction,” the researcher says. They “all occur within a few tens of thousands of years of the eruption of these huge lava flows.” But how did the dinosaurs survive? It could have been “blind luck.” (More dinosaurs stories.)