[Taxacom] Permo-Triassic extinction

[Ken Kinman]

Dear All,
    I have seen some news reports in the past several days about a possible 
crater in Antarctica being related to the massive extinction at the 
Permian-Triassic boundary.  First of all, there seems to be no evidence that 
this anomaly is even contemporaneous with that event.  Furthermore, we 
already have the Bedout Crater off the northwestern coast of Australia that 
is already known to be statistically the same age as the Permian-Triassic 
extinction.  So why try to link the Antarctic crater with this extinction 
when we don't know its age?  Needless speculation, hyped up even more by the 
press.  And EVEN IF this "crater" is the right age, the two craters would no 
doubt be connected (breakup of a comet/asteroid before hitting the Earth, 
much like the multiple strikes on Jupiter some years back).

     But what bothers me even more is the downplaying of impacts as the 
cause of both the Permian-Triassic and the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinctions 
just because of vulcanism known to have occurred around the same times.  
Seems to me that such volcanic activity could easily be triggered by such 
huge jolts to the Earth, and that impacts caused both vulcanism and 
extinction.  If a bullet to the brain happens to cause a nose bleed, it 
would be silly to list the nose bleed as the cause of death.  The bullet 
simply caused both the nose bleed and death more or less at the same time.   
Not that vulcanism cannot cause extinctions, but when you have evidence of a 
massive impact, why blame a massive extinction on volcanic activity?
  ----Ken Kinman