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A few weeks ago, several news outlets ran stories based on a press release, in which a researcher claimed that dense clumps of dark matter could be responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs. I found this claim dubious, based on what we know about dark matter. Here’s my response.

Did Dark Matter Doom the Dinosaurs?

From Slate:

he history of life on Earth is marked by occasional mass extinctions, events wiping out huge numbers of species. The most famous of these killed off all the dinosaurs (or at least those that hadn’t evolved into birds) 65 million years ago. But the mass extinction that ended the Permian period 250 million years ago was even more dramatic, killing off 90 percent of all species in an astonishingly short amount of time. As yet, the cause of this devastation is unexplained.

Mass extinctions have happened at least five times. (A sixth great extinction currently in progress, but that’s an anomaly because humans are responsible.) Some researchers have tried to figure out whether they’re periodic, recurring after specific time intervals. If they truly do repeat regularly, maybe there’s a common cause for them. [read more on Slate.com…]