why did mammals survive the astroid that wiped out the dinosaurs?

Question

if it's true that an astroid hit the yucatan peninsula (or anywhere else on the planet, for that matter) that wiped out the dinosaurs, how is it that mammals survived?

were mammals actually coexisting with dinosaurs? if so, it doesn't make sense that the effects of an astroid hit would kill off all the dinosaurs, but allow mammals to evolve.

is there a discussion on the net that explains this?

Answer 1

The argument about whether the dinosaurs were
really wiped out by an asteroid impact may never
be settled. Whatever caused the extinctions at
the end of the Cretaceous was highly selective, and many kinds of organisms survived it. There
were mammals during the dinosaur period, many
kinds of them, but all known kinds were small.

It has been 65 million years since the disappearence of the dinosaurs, and humans have been around for only about 4 million years at
most, so obviously humans and dinosaurs have
never met, despite all the comic strip, animated
cartoon and science fiction stories. The "evidence" provided by the bible is entirely irrelevant. Unless a person reads Hebrew he
doesn't even know what the bible may have been
referring to by words that, in translation, seem to
refer to something that might have been a dinosaur. The lineage of the dinosaurs may still
survive, in the animals we call birds, if it is true that
birds evolved from some small species of dinosaur.

Answer 2

so much discussion about the wiping out of dinosaurs.
the reality was that: dinosaurs were not killed by the impact of asteroid.
1) The impact of asteroid killed plants and dried up all water bodies around the area.
2) The dinosaurs dependent on the vegetations (called herbivorous) died because of starvation.
3) The dinosaurs dependent on the meat of the dinosaurs (carnivorous) also died because of hunger
4) That caused the extinction and vanishing of the dinosaurs during that time.
5) Volcanic activities also contributed to the killing of dinosaurs, fossils are evidence because they are burried in lavas.

Answer 3

I hypothesize that the smaller mammal-like creatures that were burrowers were better suited to survive because they were protected from the mass dust cloud, they could live on insects under ground, roots under ground, get their moisture from the soil and could even forage above ground when conditions permitted.

They also didn't require as much light as the oceanic animals, of which (I think) 12% died out at that time.

And, having all their predators and competition really does things to a species well being.

Answer 4

THe asteroid caused a huge cloud that darkend the earth for a long time making it a lot colder. Dnosaurs are reptiles and need warmer weather to survive so the warmblooded little mammals could easliy survive this catastrophe. They also had a lot of meat to eat then!!

Answer 5

After the meteor strikes lots of the flora and animals died and many the animals that did proceed to exist (like the dinosaurs) ought to no longer stay off of they few flora that were nevertheless round and after the herbivores died the carnivores died by using the indisputable fact that they had no longer some thing to eat. notwithstanding the small mammals that survived ought to stay off of the flora that had remained.

Answer 6

The asteriod theory, is just that a theory, it has never been proven, but your question makes you wonder don't it? If it happened, mammals shouldn't have survived either. Guess you punched some holes in the theory with that one. Good job.

Answer 7

The mass extinction of dinosaurs that occurred about 65 mill. years ago is known as the KT extinction, because it marked the transition from the Cretaceous to the Tertiary period. ("K" is the traditional abbreviation for the Cretaceous Period, to avoid confusion with the Carboniferous Period, abbreviated as "C").

There is some evidence to show that the mass extinction was caused by a meteor. Mammals of that period (small insectivores a bit like modern shrews) would have been better able to survive the consequences of a meteor hit because they were warm-blooded and furry, and did not rely as much on the sun as the reptiles did.

Wikipedia has a nice discussion of the casualties and survivors of the KT event (although it does not cite sources); I quote:

Organisms which depended on photosynthesis became extinct or suffered heavy losses - from photosynthesing plankton (e.g. coccolithophorids) to land plants. And so did organisms whose food chain depended on photosynthesising organisms, e.g. tyrannosaurs (which ate vegetarian dinosaurs, which ate plants).

Organisms which built calcium carbonate shells became extinct or suffered heavy losses (coccolithophorids; many groups of molluscs, including ammonites, rudists, freshwater snails and mussels). And so did organisms whose food chain depended on these calcium carbonate shell builders. For example it is thought that ammonites were the principal food of mosasaurs.

Omnivores, insectivores and carrion-eaters appear to have survived quite well. It is worth noting that at the end of the Cretaceous there seem to have been no purely vegetarian or carnivorius mammals. Many mammals, and the birds which survived the extinction, fed on insects, larvae, worms, snails etc., which in turn fed on dead plant matter. So they survived the collapse of plant-based food chains because they lived in "detritus-based" food chains.

In stream communities few groups of animals became extinct. Stream communities tend to be less reliant on food from living plants and are more dependent on detritus that washes in from land. The stream communities may also have been buffered from extinction by their reliance on detritus-based food chains. (See Sheehan and Fastovsky, Geology, v. 20, p. 556-560.)

Similar, but more complex patterns have been found in the oceans. For example, animals living in the water column are almost entirely dependent on primary production from living phytoplankton. Many animals living on or in the ocean floor feed on detritus, or at least can switch to detritus feeding. Extinction was more severe among those animals living in the water column than among animals living on or in the sea floor.

No land animal larger than a cat survived.

The largest air-breathing survivors, crocodilians and champsosaurs, were semi-aquatic. Modern crocodilians can live as scavengers and can survive for as long as a year without a meal. And modern crocodilians' young are small, grow slowly and feed largely on invertebrates for their first few years - so they rely on a detritus-based food chain.

-So, it's difficult to draw any hard and fast conclusions about the KT event, but there are interesting clues to think about! Read more about the event at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KT_extinction

Answer 8

The mammals were small ferret or weasel sized creatures evolved to Sabertooth tigers and wooly mammoths, etc.

Answer 9

the only mamals around at the time where small rodent like mice that required very little food and could live off what was around as most of the plant life deminished due to the light being blocked out. after the dinosaurus died off, they were able to trive without predetors and evolution jumped forward.

Answer 10

All these are just theories. No one is ever sure what was the cause of the dinosaurs extinction.

Unfortunately, many theories about the creation, earth, evolution and the heavens are just theories. However, they are being shoved down our throats are definite facts.

I always say, don't believe all what you hear and half what you see.

Good Luck!