How did the Dinosaur become extinct and is it possible that the human race will vanish for the same reason?

Answer 1

damn man you didn't pass the 6th grade?

Answer 2

Well, the dinosaurs were killed by an extraterrestrial impact, known as the K-T event.

The K-T event is a mass extinction, the 2nd largest ever (to the Permo-Triassic) is famous for the large bolide (extraterrestrial object) impact that occured off the Yucatan, creating the Chixulub crater. Glass from the crater is dated to 64.98 +/- .01 million years ago.

This event caused global devistation, evidenced by:
1) Differing Sr ratios from global wildfires
2) Microdiamonds from fried Carbon
3) Tsunami deposits found all over the southeast US
4) Stishovite (a variety of quartz which forms in extreme pressures)
5) Worldwide Iridium anomaly. Ir is usually found relatively abundantly in space, but it is very rare on earth. All over the world, at the K-T layer, the amount of Ir is much higher than normal.

It is theorized that the impact created magnitude 12 earthquakes and blocked the sun for as long as 9 weeks.

Some say the dinosaurs were already weakening due to desiese and/or climate change, but this must have been the knockout punch.

Humans could fall to such a fate, but these impacts are extremely rare, and we would probably figure out a way to lessen or stop the impact (i.e. Armaggedon movie) if it was going to happen.

Answer 3

There wasn't one single reason that every dinosaur species went extinct. While there was a major event at the end of the Cretaceous period that killed off all of the dinosaur still living at that time, there had been many, many species of dinosaur that had gone extinct long before that event. Species like Psittacosaurus, Fabrosaurus, Plateosaurus, Coleophysis, Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, Diplodocus and Stegosaurus had all disappeared long, long before the major extinction event that finished off all the dinosaurs. Every one of those species went extinct for a different reason. New food sources outcompeting their favourite foods, climate changes, diseases, new predators, geological shifts bringing competition from other regions into contact, all of these could have been responsible for individual species going extinct.

There's pretty good evidence that there was a huge collision with an extra-terrestrial object such as a giant meteor or comet that was the final straw that broke the camel's back and forced all of the remaining dinosaur species into extinction 65 million years ago.

There is certainly nothing stopping another impact like that on Earth today. The recent Shoemaker-Levy impact with Jupiter shows that impacts of that magnitude can certainly still occur today. It's only blind luck that we've managed to not get for so long. We may be due at any time.

Other factors, such as climate change, pollution, nuclear exchange, diseases, crop failures or other events could also easily cause the extinction of our species.

There's nothing special about us that will prevent us from dying should our planet be hit by a giant meteor, or some other major disaster befall the Earth. All we can do is keep hoping it doesn't happen tomorrow, and perhaps take steps to curtail activities that might make it more likely, like nuclear weapon proliferation, biological warfare experimentation, or pumping climate changing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Answer 4

Most of the dinosaurs died instantly when a large meteor hit the Earth, in the southern Gulf of Mexico. They have found shocked quartz there, which is not found naturally on Earth, only with meteors, and it dates to that time. It raised enough dust to basically cause a nuclear winter--for several years, vegetation would not have grown because the dust choking the air would have blocked out the sun. This has been corroborated by checking the deep ice in Greenland, which shows the levels of dust and dirt at that time. That meant, over the next few years, the few dinosaurs which survived the original blast would have died of starvation. And that is all from a meteor which is believed to be about the size of a house. There are many Earth orbit-crossing meteors, some of which are that size or larger, so it is not a question of if one will hit us again, but when.

Answer 5

There is an alternate theory to the asteroid impact theory. There is evidence that the number of species at the end of the Mesozoic Era was dwindling. It became dominated by such creatures as T-Rex and Tricerotops. This left the ecosystem vulnerable to such things as disease. It is possible that land bridge or something similar occured at this time resulting in an influx of other animals bringing a new suite of diseases. There is evidence that some dinosaurs survived the asteroid impact though it is always tough to prove the fossils were not eroded from an earlier strata. To answer the second question, if humans continue to grow in population, it is easy to imagine humans dominating the ecosystem. And if some deadly disease or human caused castrophy were to occur, Humans might indeed end in the way of the Dodo, I mean dino.

Answer 6

Dinosaurs died off because the meteor that crashed into the earth blocked the sun long enough for climate change to occur-ice age and the dinosaurs were unable to adapt to the changing environment. Don't believe1 that man will become extinct 2 if large object were to be hurtling towards earth believe we have technology to discover and then to shatter it .

Answer 7

yep, the K-T event - cretaceous to triassic - is the usual fare for geology students. A fine carbon layer between the two rock strata that define this time boundary. However not uniform. Perhaps the flux in the magnetic field played havoc with the atmosphere, allowing more UV light in than life can sustain, or partial loss of atmosphere when magnetic field weak and does not deflect solar winds may have some bearing. Further research on this is ongoing.

Answer 8

The most commonly accepted idea is the fall of a meteor in the area of the mexican gulf that caused huge local devastation, "nuclear" winter, lost of sunlight and large volcanic activities, around 65,000,000 years ago.
The survivors were the small animals that did not require so much food or heat or water to survive.
Human race? If we don't blow ourselves up with our stupidity, if we don't starve ourselves in wars or surpopulation, we might just live long enough for another meteor to blow the Earth!

Answer 9

Researches believe dinosaurs became extinct because of an asteroid impact. I believe us humans will bring about our own extinction. We are slowly killing our planet. And one day we will kill each other off.

Answer 10

Human life is a blip on the timeline of this planet. We will be extinct in another 1000 years

Answer 11

because if we accep the theory that says dinosaurs were extinted because of a meteor that crushed on Earth, there would have been lack of the energy of the sun, plants must have died reducing the food of animal that feed of them.- When there is not enough food, only small animals survive because they don't need so much to eat.