Cataclysms: A New Geology for the Twenty-First Century

In 1980, the science world was stunned when a maverick team of researchers proposed that a massive meteor strike had wiped the dinosaurs and other fauna from the Earth 66 million years ago. Scientists found evidence for this theory in a crater of doom on the Yucat n Peninsula, showing that our planet had once been a target in a galactic shooting gallery. In Cataclysms, Michael R. Rampino builds on the latest findings from leading geoscientists to take neocatastrophism a step further, toward a richer understanding of the science behind major planetary upheavals and extinction events.

Rampino recounts his conversion to the impact hypothesis, describing his visits to meteor-strike sites and his review of the existing geological record. The new geology he outlines explicitly rejects nineteenth-century uniformitarianism, which casts planetary change as gradual and driven by processes we can see at work today. Rampino offers a cosmic context for Earth s geologic evolution, in which cataclysms from above in the form of comet and asteroid impacts and from below in the form of huge outpourings of lava in flood-basalt eruptions have led to severe and even catastrophic changes to the Earth s surface. This new geology sees Earth s position in our solar system and galaxy as the keys to understanding our planet s geology and history of life. Rampino concludes with a controversial consideration of dark matter s potential as a triggering mechanism, exploring its role in heating Earth s core and spurring massive volcanism throughout geologic time.