Extinction of the Dinosaurs

In the New York Times article titled The Death of the Dinosaurs by  Peter Brannen, published on January 31, 2015, detailed two theories about how the dinosaurs became extinct. One of the theories tells about how "a colossal fireball from heaven" crashing into Earth destroying everything while the other theory details of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes causing the end of the dinosaurs, as an alternate theory to the meteor theory (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/opinion/sunday/the-death-of-the-dinosaurs.html)

Gerta Keller, otherwise known as Dr. Keller, is a geologist that proposed that dinosaurs' mass extinction was not caused by a large meteor striking Earth, but by volatile gases, global warming, acid rain and acidic oceans caused by an abnormally high amount of volcanic activity.

The other theory, the most known and generally accepted by the majority of society, was proposed by a father-son team of Luis and Walter Alvarez where they presented evidence and explained how the dinosaurs became extinct, by an extremely large meteor that crashed into Earth and caused a day of extreme heat and meteor showers, immediately followed by darkness as the sun was blotted out by the dust and smoke that resulted from the meteor's crash landing on Earth.

Earth has already gone through five major mass extinctions, commonly called the Big Five, where most of the life on Earth was put down and left for dead in "a geologic eye blink." Some of them were even worse than the dinosaur's extinction, such as the End-Permian mass extinction that occurred 252 million years ago. I feel like mass extinctions halt the growth of so many types of life, and that makes me sad. At the same time though, life is given another chance at life and does things just a little bit differently than before which makes me happy.

Dr. Keller hypothesized her theory after finding evidence linking massive lava flows to mass extinctions within rocks located in Texas, Tunisia. These rocks indicate that there were warming episodes of up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 10,000 years, in which there were also acidifying oceans killing off everything with the exception of the hardiest of creatures of which ended up thriving for millenniums.

I believe that both of the hypotheses were both correct, hitting the dinosaurs at the same time, making it nearly impossible for anything to survive this mass extinction. There is evidence proving that both are possible and very likely have happened, so why can't both of them be right? "...the Alvarezes pointed to traces of extraterrestrial dust in the geologic record coincident with the extinction, a finding that was later buoyed by the discovery of a 110-mile impact crater centered in Chicxulub, Mexico." This quote practically proves the meteor theory while "...dated the Indian lava flows with the same precise radiometric dating techniques that have recently tied other massive lava flows to mass extinctions. The most destructive phase of volcanism, the scientists found, took place over less than 750,000 years, a geologically brief span, and overlapped the extinction." enforces the other theory.