Is there a scientific explanation of dinosaur extinction?
437156
Sure, the main theory right now is that of a large meteoritic impact, first seriously proposed back in 1980. It fits the requirement of a rapid and sudden kill-off event. What killed the dinosuars? Well the immediate effect of a large asteroid impact would be global firestorms. The ejecta reaches low earth orbit and then superheats as it re-enters the atmosphere. This pretty much covers much of the planet in fire. Other bad things happen, toxic metals in the air and water, dust obscuring the sun, many bad things, but the main killing factor is the global fire storm.\n\nAs scientists we really like the asteroid impact theory as it is supported with the following evidence:\n\n1. The boundry layer in which the extinction occured is ultra-rich in the element irridum. These high concentrations of irridium are not found on earth, but match very well to those of meteoritic samples that we have. This boundry layer with irridium has been found all over the globe.\n\n2. Shocked quartz deposits have been found in the regions near central to lower north america, indicating a large shockwave propagated across the area\n\n3. Tiny glass beads have been found in the same regions, with larger ones more concentrated near the Yucatan. Thes glass bead are most closely related to objects we call Tektites, a glass that forms from meteorite impact ejecta. (cool science thing: you can get tektites for a couple dollars at any rock shop!)\n\n4. Tsunami deposits from that era have been found in the gulf of mexico region, indicating massive tidal wave events\n\n5. A crater caused an impact large enough to cause all of these things has been found right on the coast of the Yucatan, centered on Chicxulub, and dating to the right time period.
207254
As a late development of the dinosaurs Archeopteryx would have come extinct at the Cretaceous-tertiary boundary about\n66 million years ago (when all dinasaurs became extinct)the cause was a large asteroid that hit he earth off Yucatan in Mexico causing cataclysmic environmental changes.\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaeopteryx
689042
It is not unlikely that large creatures similar to dinosaurs of the past could evolve from present day reptiles, but mankind will have long been extinct by then.\n\nEDIT: I just remembered a television show called "The Future Is Wild." One of the episodes hypothesizes what they call a "toraton," a sauropod-like creature evolved from tortoises. This isn't some crackpot Hollywood concoction - There were some very reputable biologists behind the show, and they think it's possible.
892655
Dinosaurs did evolve, that is why they were so successful for such a long period of time. However, it is very difficult for species to recover from catastrophic population declines. Remember also that the major extinction event that occured 65 mya was not actually the only mass extinction event that took place during the time of dinosaurs and mammal-like reptiles and that this extinction event wasnt actually as catastrophic as some of the others (the P-T event wiped out 95% of all life!). What instead took place was that small mammals held a niche which evolved into the many mammalian species we have today. \nIf you follow the geological time line from the tertiary period to late cretacious you will actually notice evolution occuring throughout dinosaur species. Dinosaurs diverged from large lumbering archosaurs into saurapods and therapods and adapted to a range of environments. And, of course, therapod characteristics are evident in modern day birds (this is still debated, not proven, though very strong evidence in support). \nI would highly doubt that humans, without technological advancements, medicine etc etc would be able to survive for as long as the dinosaurs did, or to withstand as many mass extinction events. Look back as far as the cambrian explosion and you'll see that all life has come a long way!
150103
>>>>>What color was Tyrannasaurus Rex?\n\nWe have no absolutely no way of knowing.  It almost certainly varied with the age of the animal.\n\nThe young animals almost certainly had feathers, and given their small size it seems reasonably that both the feathers and the skin would have been dark brown or black to enable them to heat from sunlight. The addittion of spots or stripes would add in hiding. The young of most large birds and mammals today are stipe dor spotted so it seems reasonable to assume the same for tyrranosaur chicks.\n\n\nThe adults seem to have lacked feathers, at least for the most part. In that respect they seem to be like elephants rhinos, whales and other large mammals where the young retain at leat sparse hair that is almost totally absent from the adult.\n\nWhat colour the adults were we simply can’t know. Animals of that size generally have little use for camouflage colouration so they can be whatever colour they like. The big question is how much of a role vision played in courtship. If tyrannosaurs were like modern birds we would expect the males at least to have extremely brightly coloured heads at the very least. \n\nSo an olive grey Tyrrannosaur with a bright blue head and big red circles under the eyes is no less likely than any other colour scheme.\n\n\n\nCellar door said “They were just large versions of the lizards we have today.”\n\n\nThey most certainly were NOT large versions of the lizards we have today. They are only very distantly related to modern lizards. The closest living relatives are, not surprisingly, birds. \n\n\nWe aren’t entirely certain what the lifestyle of a T. rex was, they seem to have been a combination of predator and scavenger. In terms of lifestyle the closest living comparison would probably be a lion or hyaena.\n\nThey were in no way lizard-like.\n\n>>>>They went extinct because of a meteor\n\nThat is one theory, but one that is rapidly losing credibility.  There were probably multiple factors leading to the mass extinction that took T. rex along with numerous other species. A comet or meteor impact just doesn’t explain all the observations
304118
Birds are the direct descendents of dinosaurs.  Many scientists will say they *are* dinosaurs.  As such, they are alive, so dinosaurs are alive.\n\nWhile it remains possible that some dinosaurs proper have survived, it is extremely unlikely at this point.  There is no physical evidence for it.\n\nYour second question is difficult to answer.  Are there prehistoric creatures that have survived?  Sure!  Pretty much every species on earth today (even humans!) is older than history, that makes it prehistoric!  Defining prehistoric any other way would essentially make prehistoric mean "not surviving today", so the answer would be no.\n\nWhat you mean, of course, is creatures to have survived from truly ancient times, such as from the Mesozoic (age of dinosaurs) or older, but again, it's difficult to answer.  There probably aren't any actual species that old, but it's difficult to tell if something in the fossil record is actually the same species as something alive today.  Consider, lions and tigers look and act very different alive and are certainly two different species, but it is very difficult to tell their skeletons apart.\n\nA lot of so-called "living fossils" really aren't.  For instance, we have no fossils of the Coelacanth.  It's closest relatives in the fossil record are in another family (as different as cats and dogs).  Cockroaches are often said to have been unchanged for millions of years, but it's not the case as the fossil record records them evolving continuously.  The first fossil cockroaches had three pairs of wings!\n\nBut some things have survived nearly unchanged for millions of years.  Six-gill and Port Jackson sharks are very much like they were in the age of dinosaurs.  The Tuatara is surprisingly like it's Mesozoic relatives.\n\nBut the king of living fossils is the Lingula brachiopod.  It looks like a clam and lives by filter feeding, but don't let it's calm appearance fool you.  These little guys are survivors.  They've been living in Earth's oceans almost unchanged for 550 million years!  That's almost as long as we have animal fossils at all!  Dinosaurs are hardly teenagers by comparison!\n\nAddenda:  The Komodo Dragon is NOT believed to be a dinosaur, at least not by scientists.  It is just a large monitor lizard.  Dinosaurs are not lizards, being classed among the Archosaurs with the crocodiles, pterosaurs and birds.
491244
By itself it is not, but there is a large one near the Yucatan Peninsula, thought to be the result of a strike that led to the dinosaur extinction.
997393
hey check out this link,it will really help:\n\nhttp://www.extinctanimal.com/prehistoric.htm
909586
Permian Extinction:  251-252 million years ago.  The reigning hypthesis is that emissions from a "supervolcano" in the area of Siberia caused global warming which triggered other changes.  Most species - animal and plant, land and marine - became extinct.  It's possible that one or two meteor strikes may have caused the increase in volcanism.\n\nK-T Extinction Event - 65 million years ago.  For several million years, something had occurred which decreased biodiversity;  we don't know what.  Then, a large meteor fell leaving a crater, evidence of which may be found near Yucatan Mexico.  This impact probably started fires all over the hemisphere, and kicked up dust and soot which blocked sunlight all over the world for years.  The climate change was enough to wipe out a fair number of land and marine species of plants and animals.  The dinosaurs and large marine reptiles became extinct.
852285
For hundred of years, bones were found in China, labelled "dragon bones" ground to a poweder and used as folk remedies. Discovering a dinosaur bone was not hard, identifying such bones as being from a disappeared animal required a bit more imagination, running against the "teaching" of religious beliefs.\nThe first full dinosaur skeleton discovered which was recognized as such, occured in 1858, 148 years ago (see link).\n\nAs to the number of dinosaur spieces, it must have been nearly one million.  There are 5500 species of mammals alive today, and most of them are less than one million year old (the ancestor of those mammals living today disappared, along with some speices that dies off without leaving descendants). If one assumes that dinosaurs occupied essentially all the ecological niche that mamallians do today (there were tiny dinosaurs the size of mouse, no all dinosaurs were huge) and given that dinosaurs lived and ruled the Earth from 230 million years ago until 65 million years ago (so 165 million years), and assuming that a speice lasts one million years, that is about one million indeed.\nWe will never find them all, many dinosaurs may have disappered without leaving traces that we will ever find.
215464
Birds had already evolved from a group of relatively small predatory dinosaurs by the Jurassic (that is, the middle of the Secondary Age). No one knows for sure what killed many species (not only dinosaurs) at the end of the Cretacic Period (several million years after the origin of birds) but it was probably a combination of factors, including the large meteor. Maybe you're picturing the meteor as a gigantic bomb that just wiped everything from the Earth, but although the local effects of the hit must have been devastating, the rest of the world experienced other effects (such as darkening clouds) that were more gradual but also more lasting. \nThat being said, all species have finite existence, and the reasons for extinction and survival are many. Mass extinctions are like extraordinary combinations of the "ordinary" background extinctions that happen all the time in an evolutionary/geological scale. \nIn the Secondary/Tertiary boundary, many large animals went extinct while smaller ones survived (including us mammals!), so ecophysiological characteristics of those species may have something to do with their extinction (perhaps the meteor combined with other environmental changes). \n\nIf you're interested, there are good Evolution textbooks (Ridley or Price are modern classics) that deal with the different extinction patterns and factors.
542946
sure they were, this is clear because of the evidence we've got from geology. the bones we've found don't lie. but something you should notice, and that is dinosaurs were not all huge wild animals, they were just a kind of animals, including all sizes and all behaviours. also it is believed that some of the animals living nowadays are the children of ancient dinasaurs.
435361
I have 2 theories for you. Yes the dinosaurs died when an asteroids hit the earth.\nFirst theory: The impact or blast killed the dinosaurs. We can speculate that the dinosaurs are only living in one continent. So when the asteroid hit earth the impact and blast isntantly killed the dinosaurs. We could also say that the radius of blast was thousands of kilometers.\nSecond Theory: After impact (like in bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki), there were formation of very thick clouds that even light cannot pass through (just like in animatrix). Because light cannot pass through there were no photosysthesis. Because of no photosysthesis, there is no production of food. Especially for primary food chain, protozoans, heavily dependent on sunlight to produce food of their own.
1102153
Dang, are you the one who made the dinosaurse go extinct... Note... I think we found the culprit...
693237
You have 5 major extincion events in Earth's history:\n\nThe more famous is the K-T Extinction Event aka the day the dinosaurs became oil about 65 million years ago.  That killed the majority of the animals on land, sea and air.  \n\nThe most powerful was the one that occurred 251 million years ago and took 95% of all life on Earth.  Use the link to find about the rest.
566098
i think it might of been the start of the extinction and possibly other factors as well.   through out time animals adapt so it is possible that the meteor hit along with the rapid climate change caused this all the happen or appear to happen at once.   how do we know that the extinction was not already in progress before the meteor hit.   i don't think we will ever know.   Science is fact and a little bit of art when they come up with these ideas.
138564
These fossils are from when the flood took place. The water and the sudden pressure perfectly conserved these pieces of bone. We believe in dinosaurs just not evolution. Watch the videw "Answers from Genesis" this guy is excellent teacher