When the Cretaceous ended, the big marine reptiles had disappeared, the flying reptiles, the dinosaurs, the rudistid clams, and many species of fish, not to mention the total elimination or severe reduction of countless smaller species from the sea. At the same point in geologic time, the flood basalts now known as the Deccan Traps came out of the mantle and quickly covered at least a million square kilometres in India, effectively stopping the upwelling of the ocean. An ocean gone stagnant would kill phytoplankton, which prosper in the currents of mixed-up seas. Break the food chain and
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