Why dinosaurs became extinct

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Hao Van Huynh
AW6 Rough Draft
Adrian Martin
Feb 03, 2016
Why dinosaurs became extinct
Dinosaurs, prehistoric animals, once ruled the world hundreds of millions of years
ago. They and their world were found by paleontologists through their fossils. Thereby,
thanks to the scientists, people can know what the world of dinosaurs was, when they
appeared (the Triassic period), and when they died (65 million years ago, the late
Cretaceous period). Nevertheless, there is a huge question that has made the scientists feel
crazy and puzzled, and it has still been the biggest mystery in science: What wiped
dinosaurs out? Switek (2013) claimed that “What happened to the dinosaurs? For over a
century, paleontologists have been puzzling over the fate of our favorite prehistoric
oddities. The non-avian dinosaurs dominated the planet for an inconceivably long period of
time, and their evolutionary success only heightens the mystery of their downfall.There
are many reasons why dinosaurs became extinct, but so far paleontologists have suggested
three main theories of extinction that are strongly supported at present: the impact of an
asteroid or comet, massive eruptions of volcanoes, and marine regression.
The first theory of dinosaur extinction is the extraterrestrial impact of a comet or
asteroid. It was said that about 65 million years ago, there was a large object crashing into
the Earth, and that created giant tsunamis in the ocean, wiping out the land and killing the
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dinosaur life, according to the Impact Theory in “The Handy Dinosaurs Answer Book”. Also,
this book stated that the researchers hypothesized that some events took place after the
impact. Immediately after the impact, a huge mass of dust and debris from the impact
might have been thrown up into the atmosphere and moved by the upper winds all around
the world, which caused to block out the sunlight. Also, it was possible that heat from the
explosion created firestorms that made and blew smoke, ash, and particles into the
polluted atmosphere. In other words, the animals could be killed by either the horrible
atmosphere or the lack of sunlight that killed all plants at that time, therefore, killing
herbivorous animals leading to vanishing carnivorous animals; it’s like a domino effect.
Hence, the impact would have been the coup de grace for the dinosaurs.
There is some evidence for proving this theory. According to the Impact Theory in
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