Deccan traps


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Related to Deccan traps: Siberian Traps

Deccan traps

A very large region of thick basaltic rock located in west-central India and associated with one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the history of the earth. The eruption took place approximately 65 million years ago and is thought to have contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
References in periodicals archive ?
Summary: TEHRAN (FNA)- Scientists have obtained more precise dates for the Deccan Traps volcanic lava flows, linking peak activity more closely to the asteroid or comet impact 66 million years ago and the coincident mass extinction.
He was part of a team that dated the vast lava flows known as the Deccan Traps in India using radiation measurements.
But scientists have also pointed to another culprit: the Deccan Traps in present-day India, one of the largest volcanic provinces in the world, which just happened to be going gangbusters at the time of the extinction event.
Previous studies have shown that while the eruptions in western India's Deccan Traps began a few million years before the extinction event, volcanic activity surged closer to the time of the asteroid collision.
But some experts insist that the real reason for the mass extinction was a surge of volcanic activity in a region of India known as the Deccan Traps.
But some experts insist that the impact was a red herring and the real reason for the mass extinction was a surge of volcanic activity in a region of India known as the Deccan Traps.
Earth has seen few volcanic eruptions of this magnitude, but notable examples include the Deccan Traps, which erupted 65 million years ago and spread in a single eruption 9,000 [km.sup.3] of lava across much of what is now India.
The research argued that tens of thousands of years of lava flow from the Deccan Traps, a volcanic region near Mumbai in present-day India, may have spewed poisonous levels of sulfur and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and caused the mass extinction through the resulting global warming and ocean acidification.
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