A ruthless murder was committed millions of years ago: someone killed the dinosaurs. And we have a suspect. Witnesses say that an Everest-sized asteroid struck Earth, devastating the planet and triggering a mass extinction. It's a simple, fascinating, and convincing explanation. But is it the whole story? In recent years, new evidence has breathed life into an older theory, pointing at a second suspect—one that was much larger, slower, and deadlier.
Like a true-crime investigation, let's examine the new evidence and explore a different story that might change everything we thought we knew about the last days of the dinosaurs.
The Last Days of a Kingdom
Sixty-six million years ago, Earth was a vastly different place. It was the final days of the Cretaceous Period, one of the hottest epochs in Earth’s history—humid and lush, with dense jungles and woodlands covering much of the planet. Even the polar regions had forests of prehistoric pines and ferns, which thrived despite the long, dark months of polar night.
Oversized animals roamed everywhere. Pterosaurs filled the skies, massive marine reptiles swam in the oceans, and on land, practically everything larger than a meter was a dinosaur. Dinosaurs were one of the most successful groups of animals to ever walk the Earth, dominating for over 115 million years. And then, they were gone—extinct in a geological instant.
But why? Yes, it's true that around this time, a massive asteroid hit Earth. But was it really the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? Or did it just happen to arrive in time to take the blame? According to new evidence, just before the asteroid struck, an ancient nightmare older than even the dinosaurs decided to destroy the world.
The Beast Awakens
The continents at that time bore some resemblance to today’s world but were still shifting. India was an isolated, continent-sized tropical island, rich with rainforests and exotic wildlife, making its slow journey to collide with Asia. But lurking beneath this paradise was something else—the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region roughly 1,000 kilometers wide, and it was about to wake up in dramatic fashion.
The apocalypse began quietly about 800,000 years before the asteroid impact. The Deccan Traps started exhaling about 10 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) and sulfur dioxide annually—not enough to immediately raise alarms, but still significant. The problem was, these emissions didn’t stop. They continued for half a million years, slowly accumulating in the atmosphere.
Then, about 300,000 years before the asteroid hit, the Deccan Traps began to erupt violently, releasing vast rivers of lava. This was no ordinary eruption—it was a lava flood. Imagine an endless horizon of volcanoes, constantly spewing magma and pumping toxic gases into the atmosphere. The Indian subcontinent was the first victim, covered in magma and ash. Coastal areas were poisoned, wildfires swept the land, and entire ecosystems were eradicated.
Still, at this stage, it seemed like a local catastrophe—one of many disasters Earth had endured over billions of years. Had it stopped here, dinosaurs might still roam the planet today. But the worst was yet to come.
The Beast Turns Furious
The Deccan Traps didn’t stop. After hundreds of thousands of years of volcanic emissions, the catastrophe went global. At first, the Earth experienced a dramatic warming, with ocean temperatures rising by at least 2°C in just 100,000 years. Although devastating, this gave ecosystems some chance to adapt.
But nature wasn't done. Some gases emitted by the Deccan Traps heated the planet, while others cooled it. The mix was uneven, and soon after the warming, a sudden cooling period followed. Ecosystems that had barely adapted to higher temperatures now faced the opposite extreme. Sulfur in the atmosphere fell back as acid rain, while CO2 acidified the oceans, devastating plankton populations—the foundation of the ocean food web. With plankton gone, a massive extinction event became almost inevitable.
And then came the grand finale. Around 50,000 years before the asteroid impact, the Deccan Traps began spewing tens of trillions of tons of magma and even more poisonous gases, in an onslaught that lasted for several thousand years. Wildfires, earthquakes, and tsunamis ravaged the continent. Hypercanes—cyclones with winds reaching nearly 1,000 kilometers per hour—tore through the atmosphere, tearing holes in the ozone layer and bringing devastation. Poisonous clouds filled with mercury and hydrochloric acid swept across the globe, dealing the final blow to any remaining life.
It was a grim end for the dinosaurs—once noble rulers of a magnificent world. The eruptions eventually slowed, and natural disasters subsided, but the damage was done. The Deccan Traps had left a trail of devastation, and even regions far from India were severely impacted.
The Final Blow
Then, as if mocking the suffering world, a bright dot of light appeared in the sky. An asteroid, 10 kilometers wide, smashed into Earth with the power of four billion atomic bombs. It was the final, fatal blow—an event that would be the last straw for a planet already on the brink of collapse.
For another 800,000 years after the impact, the Deccan Traps continued to spew toxic gases, keeping Earth shrouded in poison. By the time it was all over, 75% of all species had perished, including most dinosaurs—except for the ancestors of today’s birds. These birds, in their stunning diversity, are a faint reminder of how majestic their larger cousins once were.
Who Killed the Dinosaurs?
So, who killed the dinosaurs? Was it the Deccan Traps, or was it the asteroid? Or perhaps both worked together in a catastrophic tag team? Scientists have debated this for years, and we still don't have a definitive answer. The timeline presented here is based on the most recent reconstructions of the Deccan Traps' evolution, but there are other theories, and the debate rages on.
Like many true crime stories, we can't conclude with a simple, satisfying answer. Time has erased much of the evidence, and maybe we’ll never truly know. But there is something else hidden in the dust—something terrifying. As we learn more about Earth's past, we’ve found that four of the five major mass extinctions happened during times when our planet was furiously spewing magma. It seems that the monster beneath—the same one that killed the dinosaurs—is a serial killer.
The worst extinction event of all, the Permian mass extinction 250 million years ago, was caused by the Siberian Traps. This volcanic eruption nearly wiped out all life on Earth, killing 95% of all species. And it wasn’t an outlier. The fossil record suggests that every time volcanic activity of this magnitude occurred, it led to massive extinction.
Perhaps the dinosaurs weren't murdered by an asteroid but by a much more sinister killer hiding beneath our feet—a serial killer that occasionally awakens to devastate life on Earth.
Should We Be Worried?
Should you be worried about all of this? Not really. The volcanic monster is real, but it's incredibly slow and currently very much asleep. If it were to awaken, scientists monitoring the Earth's interior would detect it millions of years in advance—time enough to prepare, adapt, and survive.