Move over, Dinosaur-Asteroid Theory. Hellooooo, Volcanoes!

Until recently, many thought the dinosaur-death-by-asteroid theory 65 million years ago was a whodunit Sherlock Holmes could've solved in his sleep. But this case ain't so elementary, my dear Watson.

Recently, Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller argued at a Geological Society of America meeting on Oct. 31 that many rapid-fire volcanic eruptions carbon-dated back to around the time of the mass extinction could've spilled enough greenhouse gases to trigger a "runaway global warming" aggressive enough to wipe out the dinosaurs, according to a Time Magazine article. Sulfur and carbon dioxide could've sprayed from volcanoes in the Deccan Traps (a 580,000 sq. mi. area in central India) into the atmosphere, showering not just unbreathable air but acid rainfall. In short, if the asteroids didn't cause the dinosaur's abrupt demise, the volcanoes sure did.

However, there's been heated debates over which occurred first, according to a National Geographic article; for Keller, the answer was obvious. After following a meandering lava flow through the Gulf of Bengal, which empties into the ocean roughly 600 miles southeast of Deccan, Keller spotted prehistoric plankton called foraminifera. The plankton, she alleges, died off about 300,000 years before the mass extinction, then reemerged later in smaller quantities. Then, Keller says, the asteroid destroyed them for good. It proves that massive volcanism hit critical mass several millenia before the infamous impact offed the dinos. From MSNBC:

"It's the first time we can directly link the main phase of the Deccan Traps to the mass extinction," said Keller.

Original research for the Asteroid Theory dates back 30 years after physicist Luis Alvarez and his geologist son Walter discovered a vast crater at Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico. Then, a global iridium layer was found in 1980; it's an element common in asteroids but not on Earth, according to an MSNBC article. Keller's not refuting the lone asteroid theory, but she is saying the space rock might've had an accomplice - a deadly cocktail of intoxicating atmosphere and magma spurting everywhere. Again, from MSNBC:

"The dinosaurs might have faced an unfortunate coincidence of a one-two punch - of Deccan volcanism and then a hit from space," she explained. "We just show the Deccan eruptions might have had a significant impact - no pun intended."

Not surprisingly, the notion of a second contributor to the mass extinction was likely to draw heavy skepticism. And unbelievers there are. University of Hawaii geochemist Greg Ravizza thinks Keller neglects to point out that these lava flows under scrutiny were only until recently tied to the Deccan Traps. The jury's still out on whether they're interrelated, according to a National Geographic article. Yet skeptics won't deny that massive eruptions are like to produce a super-toxic atmosphere.

If Keller's "double whammy" theory can be authenticated, it means a massive rewriting of, well, all Earth Science textbooks. 'Course, it doesn't take a Princeton researcher to deduce that a colossal asteroid wouldn't flush all living planetary life down the drain (for the record, it didn't - the fish survived). That's why a so-called "second gunman" is a argument much easier to digest.

Images Courtesy Time.com, MSNBC.com and NYTimes.com