Climate blamed for mass extinctions

A different spin on the extinction of the dinosaurs has been published today : -New Scientist


A palaeontologist claims climate change rather than asteroid impacts caused most mass extinctions - and the same could be happening today
MOST mass extinctions were caused by gradual climate change rather than catastrophic asteroid impacts. That's the controversial view of one palaeontologist, who says it could mean we are in the midst of a mass extinction now.
Other palaeontologists disagree, and the dispute is turning into a full-scale academic brawl. "It's a shoot-out at the OK Corral," says Peter Ward of the University of Washington in Seattle, who aired his climate change theory at NASA's Astrobiology Science Conference (AbSciCon) in Washington DC last week.