Dinosaurs?

Question

Can anyone tell me what killed off the dinosaurs.

Answer 1

Nobody knows with absolute certainty, but the currently very-well-accepted theory is that a meteor struck the earth near what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-T_extinction_event

Answer 2

Noone can tell you for sure. Although it is widely publicized that an asteroid killed the dinosaurs, recent evidence has provided doubts about this theory. It is impossible to know that the comet killed the dinosaurs or just reduced their numbers. The fossil record is extremely incomplete. There were some other things happening at the time. The overall climate cooled in the in the Cenozoic Era after the dinosaurs were supposedly killed. There may have in fact been multiple asteroids or comets hitting the earth over a few hundred thousand years, not only the one off the Yucatan. There was an increase in volcanoes which could have caused major climate problems and cooling. Flowering plants were coming dominate many environments and may have favored the mammals. There was a trend toward fewer species toward the end of the era of dinosaurs. This trend may have made them more susceptible to disease especially from migrating species which happens when land masses are suddenly connected.

Answer 3

Evolutionists say the dinosaurs died out about 65-70 million years ago. How? Well, there are over 50 different theories. Let me just list a few:
-Mammals eating dinosaur eggs.
-New narcotic plants evolving.
-Global cooling/global warming.
-Loss of plants causing herbivores to starve which in turn caused the carnivores to starve.
-A supernova exploded nearby, spraying the earth with radiation.
-A passing comet poisoned the earth with chemicals.
-One of the current favorites is the “deep impact” theory proposed by the geologist Walter Alvarez in about 1980. This theory states that a meteor strike caused dramatic climate changes much like a “nuclear winter” which supposedly caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other animals. His evidence was his discovery of an alleged world-wide layer of clay with a high iridium content, which is found in meteorites. Well, there are plenty of papers that talk about the problems with this theory. One, is that the earth’s core also has iridium in it that can be brought up by volcanos. Many Creationists believe Noah's Flood would have caused the greatest volcanoes that there have ever been, and some believe God pelted the earth with meteors during the Flood as well.

Many evolutionists though, don’t think dinosaurs are extinct anyway. The entrance to the bird exhibit at the Cincinnati zoo in Ohio has or had a sign that said: “Dinosaurs went extinct millions of years ago—or did they? No, birds are essentially modern short-tailed feathered dinosaurs.” First of all, bird evolution is one of the most controversial areas in evolutionary paleontology and evolutionists often disagree and criticize each other. We hear a lot of reports of feathered dinosaurs being found, but what you rarely hear, is that the main candidates are believed by many experts to simply be frayed collagen fibers, or hair like structures that could have supported a frill or crest like those on iguanas, or are on animals that are not dinosaurs, but flightless birds. The drawings are certainly not what we find; they are just the artists’ imagination. Dr. Alan Feduccia, a world authority on birds and an evolutionist, along with his coworkers have presented a substantial body of evidence to support their view that there are, in fact, no known dinosaurs with feathers (they believe birds evolved from different reptiles, but not dinosaurs).

Many Creationists believe Noah's Flood would have drastically changed the climate of the earth (cooler temperatures, more radiation, etc.), and that there was a short ice age after the flood. Some Creationists think the dinosaurs that survived the Flood where not able to cope so well in the new environment. They also believe that is the reason why man’s life-span shortened so much after the Flood.

Another possibility is that dinosaurs may have become extinct for the same reason that many animals become extinct today. Why do we have endangered species programs? Extinction is the rule. Why? People killing them, lack of food, man destroying the environment, catastrophes, disease, genetic problems, and so on. I’ve read that in the last 350 years, about 400 species have disappeared and some say the number is much greater.

Let’s think for a minute—countries all over the world have stories of dragon slayers. Perhaps man killed them for food, sport, or because they were a nuisance. I think we just didn’t start our endangered species programs early enough.

Another thing, is that there have been (even recently) reports of strange animals in the Amazon and the Congo that sound a lot like dinosaurs. And there are reports of giant flying reptiles in Indonesia, and so forth. There are thousands of square miles of almost impenetrable swamps and thick jungle in the world. Natives in some of these places describe beasts that fit with what just might be dinosaurs. And what about all the sightings of lake monsters? This is a field called cryptozoology—the search for hidden animals. There just might be a few dinosaurs left, teetering on the edge of extinction. We are constantly discovering new species of animals and plants in remote areas. A tree can’t run away and hide and yet the Wollemi Pine Tree avoided detection until just recently (said to have become extinct millions of years ago).

Answer 4

The K-T event is the big theory- with a meteor hitting the earth, but there are a lot of problems with this theory, in that many animals that would be expected to die were barely touched by the event- and certain areas received much less of a negative effect than others. The problem stems from creating an event so destructive as to kill off most of the animals all at once... yet soft enough to leave a lot of other animals unharmed.

Answer 5

Most probably a comet or asteroid that hit just off the coast of Yucatan about 65 million years ago....the resulting debris cloud was so enormous it effected the climate by cooling.... this obviously had an effect on the food supply and one large group of victims was the Dinosaurs ... the resulting cooler climate also had a deleterious effect on other groups as well but the one that really stands out is the giant reptiles of the era.... the Dinosaurs

Answer 6

This is the subject of current scientific debate. Certainly the most common theory is about that asteroid impact, however, the reason that theory is the most popular right now is due more to politics than to good science. Before the impact theory was proposed there were a number of others, including the theory that massive volcanic activity at the end of the Cretaceous (Deccan Traps) altered the climate and created the extinctions. This theory is not proven wrong by the evidence.
By the way, it wasn't just the dinos that died then, there were a bunch of land plants and a bunch of sea critters that died then, too - and they didn't all die at the same time, it was a step-wise extinction that took several hundred thousand years (still a geological instant).
Also, it's very compelling that the largest mass extinction in the last 600 My occurred about 250 My ago and this also coincides with a period of the largest outpouring of volcanic flood basalts in history.
See website below:

Answer 7

No one knows for sure. The extinction of the dinosaurs corresponds with the time of cataclysmic asteroid strike. The dinosaurs might have been destroyed by the climate change, or more indirectly through the effect of the strike on their food supply.

Answer 8

Another theory is that it was the Chicxulub impact plus high volume flood basalt volcanism in the Deccan Traps in India. The decline of the dinosaurs was a gradual process over time due to climatic changes.

Answer 9

The K-T event is a mass extinction (which killed many things including the dinosaurs), 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 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.

Answer 10

Look for a book by Otto Muck.
A brilliant German engineer with dozens of inventions to his name.
He found out what happened just after the war