Fossil whales in the Ica Desert of Peru – in sedimentary rocks dating 9 million years ago …. …. go to http://phys.org/print391254364.html ….
…. while at http://phys.org/print391271144.html …. we have the Putorana Plateau which is composed of basalt spewed out from lava up gushings known as the Siberian Traps, some 252 million years ago at the Permian-Triassic boundary event ….
…. the volcanic eruptions that gave issue to the extinction event known to geologists as 'the Great Dying' has an unknown cause – but the effect is more obvious (one being the Siberian Traps). Like the Deccan Traps that occurred at the same time as the Chicxulub asteroid strike some geologists would deny a connection and see the volcanic evidence as the cause rather than the symptom of catastrophism (which must never be muttered let alone uttered). It is taken for granted in this piece that the Siberian Traps are what caused the Great Extinction – putting side effect before vector. One is then told in all seriousness the eruption lasted for a million years (peanuts in uniformitarian timescales) and some 9 million years before evolution got back on track (yes, nine million years when life stopped virtually in its tracks). The numbers are meaningless of course as they are simply calculations based on geochronological time scales. Unsurprisingly, the authors of the paper then get on to the issue that dominates most science pulications nowadays – global warming. You won't be surprised to learn that all that lava foaming out of the insides of the Earth caused the release of abominable amounts of co2 and methane gases and the world got really really very hot – and global warming was thus a predominant feature of the succeeding dinosaur age (when trees grew near the poles). One would have thought the world would certainly have got a lot warmer if it had been hit by a stray cosmic body but no, it was the co2 'wot dunnit' – and we all know who is pulling the strings now that Wiki Leaks has, well, leaked the confab (strangely taken off the Internet after a few days).