Re: KT event/Volcanic Eruption relation 65 million years ago???

Peter, I am glad you framed your question "any thoughts?" rather than looking for 
anything definite.

Here are my thoughts: Your solution sounds like a good diplomatic solution, but 
not like a scientific solution.

As a diplomatic solution it might be a way of keeping people on both sides of the 
debate happy, without loss of face. This debate has been a vigorous one that has 
at times strayed right to the limits, and possibly beyond the limits of what is 
legitimate in scientific debate. There are deeply hurt feelings in some quarters.

As a scientific solution it does not really achieve very much. It is not hard to 
imagine how a major meteorite/asteroid impact might trigger increased vulcanism 
locally, or even globally. It is a bit of a stretch to have it triggering 
volcanic activity in a particular location remote from the impact site, but not 
totally implausible. But the real problem is with the time resolution. The time 
error in each of the events we are thinking about -- Yucatan asteroid impact, K/T 
boundary, eruptions of the Deccan Traps -- is around 2 million years. We are not 
totally sure of how the timings relate.

While we can imagine an impact bringing forward and triggering a major volcanic 
event that was going to occur anyway sometime in the next couple of million 
years, we can not plausibly have it introducing a completely new outbreak of 
vulcanism in an area that had not really been slated for it beforehand.

The other problem is that your idea would produce two explanations where only one 
is needed. Each of the major theories has difficulties and uncertainties in 
dealing with some of the issues surrounding the extinction of the dinosaurs, and 
different variations of the theories have emerged when it comes to describing a 
detailed mechanism. But a major meteorite could produce cataclysmic events that 
might extinguish the dinosaurs without any need for volcanic eruptions, while a 
major series of eruptions could lead to environmental and ecological changes that 
would extinguish the dinosaurs without any help from a meteorite.

The most important difference between the two theories is that the meteorite 
theory envisages a process in which the extinction event occurs largely 
overnight, and is completed within the space of a decade or so, whereas the 
eruption theory is considering an extinction that runs its course over at least a 
few thousand years, and possibly up to a million or so.

There are experts who consider that the issue is resolved. I am an interested 
non-expert who thinks that it is still largely an open question.