Terminal Cretaceous Extinction Scenario for a Catastrophe

Abstract

All the biotic changes that occurred at the end of Cretaceous time, including the extinction of the dinosaurs, may be the result of a single terrestrial catastrophe. The Arctic spillover model, first proposed to explain the marine extinctions, would have caused a rapid and intense change in the earth's climate including a lowering of temperature and of precipitation. This change in climate may have triggered a series of ecological disasters that included the radical change in the distribution of vegetation on the earth as well as the extinction of the dinosaurs.