Gigantic asteroid strike on Earth killed dinosaurs 66 mn years ago - Or did it really?

tech.hindustantimes.com:

All the technology deployed in tracking and finding out details about asteroid strikes and impact on planets, especially Earth, are wrong? The most popular scientific theory says that 66 million years ago, an asteroid smashed into the Earth and caused the extinction of all dinosaurs. Top technological gadgets have been deployed to sift through the evidence to come to that conclusion. But is it really how things happened? A new study, shockingly, disagrees. According to it, asteroids had nothing to do with the demise of the dinosaur population. And contrary to popular belief, it was volcanic eruptions which contributed to the entire species of dinosaurs dying out. This might sound ridiculous, but the study has some evidence to back its claim. Read on to know what it is.

A large amount of data was collected by seismographs in 1996. A total of 650 kilometers of area was explored to confirm that the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan peninsula indeed coincided with the carbon dating of the time when dinosaurs went extinct. Later, in 2005, 2D deep-penetration into the area was done using ocean bottom seismometers for a thorough analysis of the velocity of the structure. This set of data helped in identifying the sites for drilling to find the signature of the asteroid remains.

This study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The researchers have claimed that continent-wide ‘flood-basalt' volcanic eruptions caused this mass extinction. But at the same time, the study does not denounce the asteroid's role in all of this. But for them, instead of being the main catalyst, it only added fuel to the fire.

“All other theories that attempted to explain what killed the dinosaurs got steamrolled when