“...99.9 per cent of all [species] that have ever existed are now extinct.” (Benton 1) After one hundred and sixty million years of domination, the reign of the dinosaurs ended in fire and ice. Sixty five million years ago, the largest volcanoes in the history of the Earth erupted across what is now India, effectively annihilating the dinosaurs by spewing out noxious gas and ash, that effectively blocked out the sun killing off most vegetation and breaking the food chain, leaving the dinosaurs to starve. Compared to other groups of animals the dinosaurs were the most vulnerable to such a climatic event and the result was the end of the dinosaurs’ glorious evolutionary history.
What is a Dinosaur?
The main group of animals that went extinct during this time, leaving smaller reptiles, birds, and mammals, were the dinosaurs. Dinosaurs dominated the land and ranged from being smaller than a rooster, to being greater than the size of fifteen adult elephants. There were herbivores, carnivores, insectivores, omnivores, and detritivores. Herbivores would often live in herds, like deer or cows. Large carnivores, like the tyrannosaurs were usually solitary hunters and smaller carnivores, like the raptors --Creatures around the size of a person, with razor sharp teeth, slashing claws, and large brains, Would hunt in sophisticated packs. One of the dinosaurs defining characteristics was that they took time to take care of their young, protecting them from predators and making sure they got enough food to eat; this differs from most reptiles (Digging into Dinosaurs 4-5). For example today’s largest lizard, the komodo dragon, will eat its own young if the young do not get away, so they have to hide up in the trees. Dinosaurs were not even buil...
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Martin is confident that the extinctions must have been caused by “something outside the normal experience of mammals.”
1) Carroll, R. L. 1988. Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. W. H. Freeman and Company, New York.
The question of what caused the extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period is one that archaeologists have struggled to answer for decades, but why should it matter? Discovering with certainty the cause of megafaunal extinction would simultaneously prove or disprove any of the proposed implications of each existing theory regarding this massive extinction.
...actly when the impact of the asteroid occurred, how much damage it truly did, and how long the period of atmospheric darkness lasted, I believe that there is enough positive data to persuade even the most skeptical audience. This recent discovery of the flourishing fungi during a period when larger plants died is just another stepping stone in solving the mystery of what truly happened to the dinosaurs for good. I believe this research is, overall, very credible and establishes a reliable theory of what exactly happened to the dinosaurs and what life was like during the period following their demise.
At one point it was thought that an impact from an asteroid combined with volcanic activity would have created mass numbers of firestorms with ground temperatures reaching 1000 degrees Celsius. It was thought that anything that was not destroyed directly from the fires would have died due to blocked sunlight as a result from the soot.
Sex, drugs, and disasters are both popular topics that grab public attention and scientific theories of the extinction of dinosaurs. While sex and drug hypotheses represent silly speculations, the disaster claim is good science: it provides testable evidence, has an impact on other scientific fields, and generates continuous research.
Scientists often think at times that the existence of dinosaurs and their demise is so shrouded in mystery, that people will never know what happened to them. According to Scientists dinosaurs first evolved around 235 million years ago, way before man evolved. No human being lived, when the dinosaurs were alive. The only way to get some clue about what they looked like and how they lived is all in the fossil layers under the earths surface. However, around 65 million years everything changed to cause the extinction of those wondrous animals. Most scientists think that an asteroid hit the earth and wiped them out. But there's a new theory, Professor Gerta Keller, who is also a Paleontologist wrote that, while her theory may not be as riveting as a massive space object hitting Earth, it answers the questions that she said didn't seem to fit in the “wipeout” theory thats been publicized since the early 1980s. The theory that's been branded into our minds was that a single asteroid involves the Chicxulub crater in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Keller's study involves much of the study of rock formations above and below the C...
While working in Antarctica, two separate research teams with hundreds of miles between them each made astounding discoveries. They discovered dinosaur fossils. Antarctica has been home to many other dinosaur fossil finds but what was so special about these fossils is that they were from an unknown species of dinosaurs. Really what the discovery compliments is that the discovery of these fossils encourages the theory of plate tectonics and continental drift. Antarctica now is a baron frozen continent with little life. 170 million years ago it was a more habitable environment because was oriented at a different location on earth. The two new species of dinosaurs were that of a meat-eater and a plant-eater. The meat-eater was found on an ancient island the used to be covered by sea and the plant-eater was discovered on the slopes of a mountain that is 13,000 feet high but probably a riverbed at the time when this dinosaur roamed the earth. This discovery not only shows how continental drift and plate tectonics helped the dinosaurs move but also the discovery of two new species of dinosaur. These discoveries will help us further our knowledge of what happened to the dinosaurs.
In the early nineteen hundreds, dinosaur fossils were discovered and recognized around the globe. Greedy scientists and civilians, searching for their own prize skeleton, rushed to rip bones out of the ground, destroying the fossils as they went. It was not until later in the century that scientists and paleontologists began pondering how such widespread creatures disappeared. Currently, paleontologists debate the two main hypotheses of how the classic dinosaurs died: from volcanic activity or an asteroid impact. Although they result in the same outcome, the volcanic and asteroid hypotheses differ in key elements: the actual event, the environment's stress, and the impact on life.
There are many different theories of how the dinosaurs went extinct, but the most popular theory is an asteroid hit earth. For about 150 million years, dinosaurs were the most dominant form of animal life on
seems like it happened so sudden, as geologic time goes, that almost all the dinosaurs
Another less popular theory to explain the disappearance of the dinosaurs suggests that a drop in the oxygen levels in the lower atmosphere led to the gradual death of all kinds of species.
What were dinosaurs like? How did they survive? How did they become extinct? These are some of the many questions to which answers are being sought. Dinosaurs were one of the largest creatures to ever walk the earth and one of the mysterious creatures too, how they survived and how they became extinct in a flash has been a mystery. One of the many theories associated with dinosaur extinction is an asteroid collision with earth.
The extinction of dinosaurs is an interesting issue. “There once was a time when people didn’t know anything about dinosaurs. In fact, there wasn’t even the world “dinosaur” until 1842” (Dr. R. Holtz, JR, 2007, P.6). Although dinosaurs died more than 60 million years ago, paleontologists have not yet discovered the reasons of their extinction. There are many types and sizes of dinosaurs. There are gigantic types, which are the common types, and small-sized dinosaurs. Ironically, dinosaurs mean “Terrible lizard” and they are not even considered reptiles; they are a different type of animal. Additionally, they also disagree on how many years it took the dinosaurs to be extinct. Some scientists believe it took almost millions of years. Others believe it took several years only to devastate those huge creatures. Moreover, there are a very considerable number of possible theories that scientists study, but none of them have yet been proven. Various scientists say volcanic eruptions are the reason of their extinction. Other studies believe that fatal diseases that occurred among them or changes of climate are the reasons of their extinction. However, the most common theory is the asteroid incident that occurred long time ago and destroyed every living thing on the planet (Fastovsky & M. Sheehan, 2005, P. 4). Despite the fact that there are no proven reasons of the dinosaurs’ extinction, I will discuss and state possible reasons and causes of this mysterious phenomenon.
Since the first dinosaur fossils were found in the early 19th century, mounted fossil dinosaur skeletons have been major attractions in museums and dinosaurs turned into an lasting part of world. The sizes of some groups, as well as their seemingly horrible and incredible nature, have enhanced dinosaurs' regular appearance. Persistent public interest for the animals has resulted in major support for dinosaur science. Dinosaurs can be generally described as archosaurs with limbs held erect beneath the body.