There’s no shortage of candidates for the cause of the mass extinctions of prehistory. But experts have found flaws in every one.
Asteroid impact at Chicxulub, Yucatan clearly played a role in the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction that wiped out the non-flying dinosaurs 66,000,000 years ago, though scientists point to the serious disruptions that had begun hundreds of thousands of years before with the basalt flows of the Deccan Traps.1 Giant basalt lava flows that poisoned the atmosphere and oceans played a role in four or perhaps all five major extinctions. But other enormous basalt flows have not caused extinctions, nor did they cause the tsunamis associated with various extinctions.2 Researchers have suggested many other mechanisms, but there’s no consensus at all.
Lurking in the background, however, is a quite plausible cause, one that would have possessed the power to set off the volcanic activity, air pollution, mass wasting, sea level shifts, loss of oxygen in oceans, climate changes, and other phenomena associated with the extinctions.
The Martian Theory
American history contains two outstanding wrongs committed against groups of us: the killing, displacement, and mistreatment of Native Americans and the subjection of African Americans to slavery and ongoing discrimination. Various thinkers have suggested kinds of reparations for these acts; but views differ sharply on whether reparations are justified, who should pay them, who should receive them, and what amount is fair and feasible. Instead of serving to heal our country, reparations have become one more divisive issue.
The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 set off a nationwide surge of protests over police brutality against African-Americans. On April 20, 2021, the jury found Derek Chauvin, the police officer who pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds, guilty of murder in the second and third degrees and manslaughter in the second degree. Worldwide attention to Floyd’s death has focused on racial disparities in the United States as well as on the specific issue of police brutality against African-Americans.
April 4, 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was killed by a single bullet as he stood on the second floor balcony outside his hotel room in Memphis.
On April 27, 1996, 76-year old William Colby, former director of the CIA, disappeared from his vacation home on the water at Rocky Point, Maryland. Colby had spent the day at a marina fixing his sloop. He returned home after 6 pm, phoned his wife, who was visiting her mother in Texas, and told her he was tired and would eat supper, then go to bed. He watered his trees, met with his gardener and his visiting sister around 7:15 pm (sunset was at 7:57), and fixed himself a meal. The next day there was no sign of him. Eventually, a neighbor phoned the police. They found his supper half-eaten. The computer and radio were on. His canoe was missing.