Heavy volcanic activity on Mars stopped at the same time the dinosaurs went extinct, according to new NASA research.
The giant martian shield volcano Arsia Mons produced a massive new lava flow every million years or so. It mysteriously stopped around the time of Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, when large numbers Earth’s plant and animal species, including dinosaurs, went extinct.
Scientists used extremely high-resolution imaging from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to study Arsia Mons to date when it stopped erupting.
“We estimate that the peak activity for the volcanic field at the summit of Arsia Mons probably occurred approximately 150 million years ago—the late Jurassic period on Earth—and then died out around the same time as Earth’s dinosaurs,” Dr. Jacob Richardson, a researcher at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said in a press statement. “It’s possible, though, that the last volcanic vent or two might have been active in the past 50 million years, which is very recent in geological terms.”
Although there is no evidence of any direct connection between the extinction of the dinosaurs and the volcano stopping, the timing is unusual and there are some possible causes which could effect both Earth and Mars.
In a 2015 study, U.S. researchers found evidence from impact craters on Earth suggest major asteroids tend to hit Earth once roughly every 26 million years, causing mass extinctions. The reoccurring asteroid impacts and ensuing mass extinction events were driven by a dim companion star to our sun, scientists found.
This theoretical star, named Nemesis after the Greek goddess of revenge, would theoretically orbit around the sun every 26 million years, redirecting the orbits of asteroids to bombard inner solar system planets like Earth and Mars. However, further research has cast doubt on this hypothesis
Researchers have never found Nemesis, but such a star would be exceedingly difficult to detect.
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