Volcanism, Impacts, and Mass Extinctions: Causes and Effects

This volume comprises articles stemming from the international, multi-disciplinary conference that took place in March 2013 at London's Natural History Museum (NHM). This conference brought together researchers across geological, geophysical, and biological disciplines to assess the state of research into the causes of mass extinction events and, in particular, to evaluate the respective roles of volcanism, bolide impacts, and associated climate and environmental changes. Key results of this seminal conference are presented in papers spanning a wide range of disciplines. Participants concluded that large igneous province volcanism along with associated climate and environmental changes played significant roles in four of the five major mass extinctions in Earth history. There was overwhelming agreement that a single large asteroid or comet impact (Chicxulub) could not have been the sole cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, but rather was a contributing factor along with volcanism.