‘Asteroid Did Not Kill All Dinosaurs, Volcanoes Were the Main Culprit’ – New Study Divides the Scientific Community? The Evidence Tells a Different Story

A new paper claiming the Deccan Traps volcanism, not the Chicxulub asteroid, was the primary driver of the dinosaur extinction has reignited headlines and online debate. Yet the broader scientific community remains largely unconvinced, with the overwhelming weight of evidence still pointing to the asteroid as the decisive killer.

The study highlights the Deccan Traps’ prolonged CO₂ and sulphur emissions, which caused centuries of climate instability, ocean acidification, and warming in the final million years of the Cretaceous. Proponents argue this long-term stress made ecosystems fragile, and that the extinction was more gradual than a single impact event would suggest.

However, multiple independent lines of evidence continue to favour the asteroid as the main trigger. The global iridium anomaly, shocked quartz, tekтιтes, and the precisely dated 180 km Chicxulub crater all coincide with the K-Pg boundary within 33,000 years. Marine and terrestrial extinction patterns show an abrupt collapse, not the slower decline expected from volcanism alone. Recent mercury-isotope and climate-modelling studies (2020–2025) confirm that Deccan emissions, while significant, were insufficient to produce the rapid, worldwide die-off recorded in the fossil record.

Most researchers now accept a nuanced view: the Deccan Traps stressed the planet, but the asteroid delivered the final, catastrophic blow. The scientific community is not meaningfully “divided” on this point — the asteroid remains the dominant explanation in peer-reviewed literature.

From the Hell Creek Formation to the Yucatán crater, the data continue to show that while volcanoes set the stage, it was the asteroid that ended the Age of Dinosaurs.