Dinosaur
Dinosaurs: Extinct or Natural Causes
As geologic time goes, all the dinosaurs living on earth suddenly disappeared. How did these dominated and gigantic creatures really die? Was it a slow extinction through natural causes, or did it happen suddenly? These questions give rise to many different beliefs on how the dinosaurs disappeared over sixty-five million years ago. Something happened sixty-five million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period that was so devastating that it altered the course of life on earth. Extinction is easily defined: the birth rate fails to keep up with the death rate. However, the definition does not answer the question about the nature or causes of extinction. Since so many different causes of death of the dinosaur arose, paleontologists generally divide extinction into two main types. The first is called background extinction, or the isolated extinction of a species due to a variety of cause. Included in these background extinctions is out competition (the fight of the food), depletion of resources in a habitat, changes in climate, development or destruction of a mountain range, river channel migration, eruption of a volcano, the drying of a lake, or the destruction of a forest, grassland, or wetland habitat. The second type of extinction is called mass extinction. There are four main components: Large numbers species go extinct; many types of species go extinct; the effects are global; and the effects occur in a geologically short period of time (Encarta).
The dinosaur could not have lived forever. No creature, plant, and bacteria are forever, not even Homo Sapiens. Extinction is the ultimate fate of all species. One theory on how the dinosaurs became extinc...
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... environmental crisis may have spelled disaster for the dinosaurs. It had to be so sweeping that it affected countless other forms, including the dinosaurs. It is how these successful creatures were eliminated from the planet is a fascinating mystery. however, scientist cannot determine how dinosaurs really became extinct. Perhaps something fell the sky and struck the planet causing a huge dust cloud, utterly shutting out the sun and forcing the dinosaurs into extinction. But why did the little mammals survive, or the crocodiles and birds? Current evidence suggests that the sun or a “greenhouse effect” terminated the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago (Colbert).
Bibliography:
Colbert, Edwin Harris, 1905- Dinosaurs; Their Discovery and Their World. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.,INC., 1961, 1st ed.
Encarta Encyclopedia Article, "Dinosaur", 2001
The biggest mass extinction of the past 600 million years (My), the end-Permian event (251 My ago), witnessed the loss of as much as 95% of all species on Earth. Key questions for biologists concern what combination of environmental changes could possibly have had such a devastating effect, the scale and pattern of species loss, and the nature of the recovery. New studies on dating the event, contemporary volcanic activity, and the anatomy of the environmental crisis have changed our perspectives dramatically in the past five years. Evidence on causation is equivocal, with support for either an asteroid impact or mass volcanism, but the latter seems most probable.
ix[9] Highfield, Roger. Dinosaur Extinction Theory ‘A Myth.’ The Telegraph – UK. March 1, 2004. Internet: http://www.rense.com/general49/tho.htm
"Evidence For Warm-Blooded Dinosaurs." Science & Children 51.1 (2013): 19-20. Education Research Complete. Web. 13 Jan. 2014.
4. Pearson, Helen. “Asteroid let dinosaurs rule.” Nature 17 May 2012 Nature News Service/ Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2015
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs” is written by Stephen Jay Gould, professor of geology and zoology at Harvard. This essay is one of more than a hundred articles on evolution, zoology, and paleontology published by Gould in national magazines and journals. It tells about scientific proposals for the extinction of dinosaurs – a confusing but an exciting problem that humanity tries to solve. By analyzing and describing each of the claims for the reptiles’ demise – sex, drugs, and disasters – Gould differentiates bad science from good science and explains what makes some theories silly speculations, while the other, a testable hypothesis.
Toys, movies, clothing is a clear indication that our fascination with dinosaurs is much more than what the word represents, but also a genuine interests in the actual creatures scientists have uncovered. Dinosaur toys allow children to use their imagination to transport back to a time when dinosaurs walked the earth, became extinct, and eventually became fossils. Any kind of toy figure encourages imagination, dinosaur figures gives children an opportunity to learn about the science behind dinosaurs and fossils. Dinosaur toys, movies, clothing and advertisements also encourage children to ask questions, which becomes an opportunity to visit the library. “Judging from their frequent appearances in the movies and on television, dinosaurs have a firm hold in the popular imagination, one realm in which they show no danger of becoming extinct” (History.com, 2009). They are fierce, strong and because of anthropomorphism, dinosaurs are our
Controversy surrounds the extinction of the dinosaurs. According to one theory, dinosaurs were slowly driven to extinction by environmental changes linked to the creeping withdrawal of shallow seas from the continents at the end of the dinosaur era. Proponents of this theory propose that dinosaurs dwindled in number and variety over several million years.
The debate of whether dinosaurs were cold blooded or warm blooded has been ongoing since the beginning of the century. At the turn of the century scientists believed that dinosaurs had long limbs and were fairly slim, supporting the idea of a cold blooded reptile. Recently, however, the bone structure, number or predators to prey, and limb position have suggested a warm blooded species. In addition, the recent discovery of a fossilized dinosaur heart has supported the idea that dinosaurs were a warm blooded species. In this essay, I am going to give supporting evidence of dinosaurs being both warm and cold blooded. I will provide background information on the dinosaur that was discovered and what information it provides scientists.
When looking at any mass extinction event, there are a number of questions that will invariably need to be answered. When did it happen? How many species were affected? Which ones were they? What was the cause of such widespread death? How did some species survive while other, thriving ones were wiped out completely? For four of the “Big Five” mass extinction events, the Ordovician-Silurian, Permian, Triassic-Jurassic, and Cretaceous-Paleogene, the answers to these questions are all agreed upon, almost universally. The remaining event, known as the Late Devonian mass extinction, lacks a definitive answer as to the cause.
The most significant event of the Cretaceous era came at its end. Nearly 65 million years ago, the second most severe mass extinction in earth’s history occurred. This resulted in the loss of around 80% of species living at the time. Though nowhere near as severe as the end-Permian mass extinction, the end-Cretaceous extinction is the most well known mass extinction event. This is due to the violent event that caused it the extinction, as well as the chapter of earth’s history that it closed: the Dinosaurs. The Cretaceous Event ( often shortened to K-T event) Of the animals that were killed off were the flying reptiles (pterosaurs) and the last few mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, both early marine reptiles. Many mollusks and species of microscopic plankton were killed. Terrestrial plants suffered mass extinction as well. Almost 60% of terrestrial plants were lost. This led to high extinction rates among insect populations, especially insects that were highly specialized to feed on just a few types of plants had it the worst. It took approximately 9 million years for the global insect populations to recover from the Cretaceous extinction. Immediately after the extinction, the earth saw an explosion of short term species who respond well to fire, or other external disturbance. Evidence of the catastrophe comes from a thin rock layer deposited worldwide just after the impact. It is dominated by fossil plants whose descendants recover quickly after fires of other disturbances, such as Fire Weed in Alaska. The causes of the Cretaceous extinction are still being debated by paleontologists. Scientists agree that the main cause of the extinction was a...
When I started this paper, I had many questions. I wanted to know what all the main theories of dinosaur extinction are and how many there are. I also wanted to know what factors in each theory would have killed these massive beasts. Other questions I had are: had dinosaurs been dying out before the event? Did any dinosaurs survive the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) event? What religious beliefs contradict the dinosaurs’ very existence? The last question I wanted to address was whether or not an event such as this one could happen to us? After five papers and hours of research, some of the new questions I have are: what happened after the Cretaceous/Tertiary event? I would also now like to know if one of these theories could happen to us and how we would be able to handle it. I came up with these questions because I wanted to know we are living with this present danger. Whether a huge ice age could eradicate an entire population of humans is mind-boggling and would be extremely interesting to research. To come up with these new questions, I let my brain wander. I was joking a...
seems like it happened so sudden, as geologic time goes, that almost all the dinosaurs
So agreement over dinosaur extinction is far from unanimous, and fossil’s continue to be found that adds to the knowledge about how dinosaurs lived and died. The climate change theory still holds sway over some scientist, that refute that the chicxulub impact was the major reason for the dinosaurs extinction. Some evidence from the 65-million-year-old lava flows in india hint that a giant, gaseous volcanic plume might have initiated global climate change that threatened and killed the dinosaurs. Scientist continue to research and make more conclusions on what killed
Mysteries are so fascinating because mysteries are like taking unknown information, discovering it, and making it known. Discovering why dinosaurs went extinct is looking into the discovery of their extinction and why they are extinct. Dinosaurs were the largest reptiles known to man, and around 65 million years ago, dinosaurs became extinct. Two-hundred and thirty million years ago the first dinosaur-like creature roamed the earth. These creatures were the top of the food chain, and it is crazy to think that the most dominant of all species became extinct. But there had to be either a theory such as ‘The Asteroid theory’, ‘The Ice Age theory’, or the ‘Volcano Theory’ to explain such drastic measures for the entire population to die out. This is where the mystery takes place and begins.
...pdated 1995, accessed 3 Sept. 2000), Dino Buzz – What killed The Dinosaurs ? – Current Arguments,