Just a minor nitpicking. The Wiewiora paper refers to a change in the ratio of fern spores to angiosperm pollen. Ferns do not produce pollen at all. Angiosperms (conifers, cycads etc.) and flower plants do.

Some minor editing of the above piece will set the record straight and minimize confusion.

I take it that it’s a typographical error when it’s said that the Deccan Traps basalt occurred over a period of 200 million years? I’ve read that it was actually from 68 to 60 MYA, and the majority spanned perhaps 300,000 years.

I have read two recent popular books; “Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life” by Scott Sampson and “Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World” by Dorrik Stow (both of which I strongly recommend). Sampson summarises the theories as either the Silver Bullet (one event) or Blitzkrieg (several events) hypotheses leading to the K-T extinction, favouring one event probably the asteroid theory. Stow favours the volcanic theory, putting out that iridium is also released in volcanic eruptions and shocked quartz can also be produced. The major query would be how explosive the volcanic eruptions were, whether the lava just gradually flowed over the Indian subcontinent or whether it was highly explosive throwing a lot of debris high into the atmosphere?

The question is; how quickly did the mass extinction occur? 1% of the dinosaurs were around at the time of the K-T boundary, so 99% of dinosaurs had already gone extinct (which isn’t saying much; all species eventually go extinct or evolve into something else). Were the 1% in gradual decline or did they disappear suddenly (with the exception of the avian dinosaurs, which are still doing very well)?

No, really, why would anyone want to make a manned landing on an asteroid, to detonate a nuclear bomb, that would turn the thing into an even deadlier load of shrapnel?

I’m nit picking here, but being in the field of launch vehicles often times leads to conversations about this stuff with people who aren’t.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I had to explain why nuclear weapons are not the solution for this particular problem.