How did the dinosouars become extinct?

Question

I have heard alot like a BIG meteor hit, or the ice age, or that a BIG valcano erupted and killed them. but which one is true or is there another possibility?

Answer 1

Basically all three:

The best scientific bet is that the dinosaurs were killed as a result of an asteroid hitting the gulf of Mexico off of the Yucatan. It is known as the Chixilub impact after the closest town. The asteroid impact hurled huge quantities of material into the atmosphere, so of which being red hot ignited forest fires around the globe as the materials hit the earth. Other materials stayed in the atmosphere, blocking off the sun for a long period of time, causing temperatures to drop. The temperature drop and the lack of sun caused the vegetation to die. Lack of vegetation made the plant eaters starve to death, and with the death of the plant eaters, the carnivorous dinosaurs died off. Small mammals and other animals that could hide in underground burrows, survived. Their descendants multiplied, diversified, and repopulated the earth.
There was a major volcanic event going on at the same time in India, which are called the Deccan Traps eruptions. The effect of this massive outpouring of lava and gasses certainly helped the dinosaurs demise.

So yes there was an asteroid. The asteroid triggered a mini-ice age, and there was a big eruption, although not your typical volcanic eruption. It was a MUCH bigger event than some volcano.

Answer 2

There seems to have been a combination of circumstances over a period of about a thousand years.

Firstly there were huge volcanic eruptions in what is now India forming the enormous lava flows now called the Deccan Traps. These eruptions, which continued for hundreds of years, put so much ash and gas into the atmosphere, that the climate all round the planet began to change.

As the climate changed, so did the habitat in which dinosaurs lived, together with the vegetation on which many dinosaurs fed. The world dinosaur population was suffering from stress.

The final blow came 65 million years ago, with the impacts of at least two giant meteorites, one just off the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, called the Chicxulub impact, the other in the Arabian Sea, called the Shiva impact. The devastation, gas and dust caused by these impacts and the amounts of smoke from burning vegetation probably obscured the sun for a decade leading to what is called a Mass Extinction Event, which is when a high proportion of all life on the planet dies.

The dinosaurs at the top of the food chain never stood a chance.

Answer 3

I just saw a show about this on PBS, which suggested yet another possibility. A few million years before the asteroid hit the Yucatan, the continents were shifting, and moving together. When dinosaurs from one part of the world came into contact with dinosaurs from another part of the world, the diseases that they had built up an immunity to were spread to dinos that had no such immunity. In other words, when the dinos from Continent A (with disease X) met dinos from Continent B (with disease Y), the B dinos got disease X, and the A dinos got disease Y, and neither set of dinos had any immunity to the "new" disease, so their numbers were depleted. According to the show, there is evidence that the number of dinosaurs had declined shortly before the asteroid hit, but, of course, the "disease" idea is little more than a guess for now.

Another possibility associated with continental drift: the drift caused a climate change, making the planet cooler and dryer and less hospitable to dinosaurs.

Whatever happened before the asteroid hit, though, the asteroid, and the subsequent catastrophic atmospheric changes, certainly seems to have finished the dinosaurs off (except for the ones that evolved into birds, that is).

Answer 4

The meteor event at the Yucatan Peninsula 65 million years ago is the preferred theory.
The ice ages you speak of most likely did not cause the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they are responsible for mass extinctions in earth's history. Look up Snow Ball Earth to see extreme ice ages in earth's history.
There was also a theory that the evolution of flowering plants poisoned the dinosaurs, but I don't think this one has any support anymore.

Answer 5

Whether it is a meteor or ice age or whatever it is, it is hard for any scientist to have definite proof at this point. What we know is because of a drastic change in the environment, most likely in weather, there was a lack of food & water. As a result, the dinsosouars die of hunger.

Answer 6

The majority of them died do to enviromental issues. They needed a warm temperature and the earth atmosphere was cooling. Also not ALL the dinosouars became extinct. They evolved into other creatures such as birds.

Answer 7

The current belief is that a large meteor hit the earth in Mexico...

Answer 8

either the big rock or the ice age...id rather believe those two than the volcano...other than that i think it deals with god...he created the planet and at that time there was way to much vegetation so he got these big creatures to trim it down some...so yea......

Answer 9

http://youtube.com/watch?v=nZRq_Q5E4v4

i think they died in the iceage