Indian crater may have led to dinosaur extinction

New York, Dec 16: An Indian-American researcher has said in a study that dinosaurs could have become extinct because of several meteor impacts, massive volcanic explosion in India and climate changes.

These multiple factors resulted in the Shiva Crater in India, according to Sankar Chatterjee, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs from the face of earth 65 million years ago.

Mr Chatterjee, Curator of Paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech and professor of geosciences, recently published his study on the crater, which was reviewed by his peers.

The researcher was interviewed by a local newspaper in Texas and he stated the factors for the dinosaur extinction.

''From the very beginning, we knew this is the killer meteorite, the cause of the extinction,'' he told The Daily Toreador adding ''this is just the beginning of the whole study.'' The crater measures 600 km by 400 km, and was created by the impact of a 40 km wide meteor, according to the Web site of Astrobiology Magazine.

Mr Chatterjee further said, ''We cannot visualize what would happen if a meteorite of this size would crash into our planet.'' Some results could be darkness as well as plants and animals being wiped out.

The newspaper also interviewed Asish Basu, a Professor of earth sciences at the University of Rochester in upstate New York. Basu told the newspaper that he had reviewed Chatterjee's paper and was of the view that Chatterjee's work would make a tremendous impact on the scientific community.

''It's a very interesting study, and he is a very good scientist,'' the newspaper quoted Basu as saying.

William Glen, visiting scientist and historian of the US Geological Survey, who also conducted research on the crater, expressed similar sentiments.

UNI