The Deccan Traps
India is already burning when the asteroid hits
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The Deccan province covers around 500,000 square kilometres of basalt. Dating places the main phase tightly around the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary, and some studies suggest the impact may have intensified the volcanism through seismic shaking. The debate between "impact alone" and "volcanism plus impact" is among the most persistent in the field. The general lesson is that mass extinctions rarely have a single cause: they happen when several stresses coincide, and a system already under pressure can absorb less.
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Just before the asteroid struck, enormous volcanic eruptions in India had been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. The lava is still there, over two kilometres thick. Many researchers think ecosystems were already weakened — and that the impact struck something already unsteady.
Connects to
Part of Terra Saga — the story of Earth on a timeline. terrasaga.org