We’re being told that the dinosaurs were terribly unlucky to have been wiped out by the asteroid which hit the Yucatan peninsula some 65 million years ago. If it had arrived a little sooner or a little later, it would have landed in the sea and caused less devastation, and it was even worse luck that the impact site at Chicxulub was rich in sulphates, which caused devastating global cooling as aerosols high in the atmosphere.
The implication seems to be that the dinosaurs were swindled by the Universe and they should ask for a recount or their money back. But the tale of woe conveniently ignores the string of volcanic eruptions, which created the Deccan Traps at what is now northern India. The eruptions started 250,000 years before the asteroid hit and continued for another 500,000 years afterwards.
So it looks like the asteroid was just a blip, even if a big one, in 750,000 years of climate catastrophe. And if everyone knows about it and few people know about the volcanoes, that suggests that the asteroid has a better press agent.
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