Why dinosaurs became extinct

Unlock access to all the studying documents.

View Full Document

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

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