Double whammy link to extinctions
 By Paul Rincon

The chances that asteroid impacts and huge bouts of volcanism coincide
randomly to cause mass extinctions may be greater than previously imagined.

UK researchers conducted statistical tests to determine the probability of
such catastrophic events happening at the same time in Earth history.

They found massive releases of lava and space collisions should have
overlapped three times in the last 300 million years.

Details will be published in a future issue of the geological journal
Lithos.

The work has been done by Dr Rosalind White and Professor Andy Saunders of
the University of Leicester.

The probabilities they calculated assumed there was no causal link between
the two phenomena - that impacts from space did not set off the volcanism.

Read the Rest at BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3582767.stm

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