Top 10 Myths About Dinosaur Extinction Research Paper
The Top 10 Myths About Dinosaur Extinction
Misconceptions About the Extinction of Dinosaurs
Cen Chen
We all know that the dinosaurs mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) vanished off the face of the earth about 65 million years ago, a mass extinction that still lingers in the popular imagination. How could creatures so huge, so fierce and so successful go down the drain virtually overnight, along with their close cousins, the pterosaurs and marine reptiles? The details are still being worked out by geologists and paleontologists, but in the meantime, here are 10 beliefs about dinosaur extinction that aren't quite true.
1. All the dinosaurs went extinct quickly, at the exact same time.
According to our best knowledge, the K/T (Cretaceous/Tertiary) Extinction was caused by a meteor that plunged into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 65 million years ago. However, this doesn't mean that all the world's dinosaurs suffered an instant, fiery death. The meteor impact raised a huge cloud of dust that blotted out the sun, and caused the gradual demise of a) the earth's vegetation, b) the herbivorous dinosaurs that fed on that vegetation, and c) the carnivorous dinosaurs that fed on the herbivorous dinosaurs. This process may have taken as long as 200,000 years, still a blink of the eye in …show more content…
Dinosaurs were the only creatures that went extinct 65 million years ago.
Think about it for a second. Scientists believe the K/T meteor impact unleashed a blast of energy equivalent to millions of thermonuclear bombs; clearly, dinosaurs wouldn't have been the only animals to feel the heat. The key difference is, while numerous species of prehistoric mammals, prehistoric birds, plants and invertebrates were wiped off the face of the earth, enough species survived to repopulate the land and sea afterward. The dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles weren't so lucky; they were exterminated down to the last individual (and not only because of the meteor impact, as we'll see
Misconceptions About the Extinction of Dinosaurs
Cen Chen
We all know that the dinosaurs mysteriously (or not so mysteriously) vanished off the face of the earth about 65 million years ago, a mass extinction that still lingers in the popular imagination. How could creatures so huge, so fierce and so successful go down the drain virtually overnight, along with their close cousins, the pterosaurs and marine reptiles? The details are still being worked out by geologists and paleontologists, but in the meantime, here are 10 beliefs about dinosaur extinction that aren't quite true.
1. All the dinosaurs went extinct quickly, at the exact same time.
According to our best knowledge, the K/T (Cretaceous/Tertiary) Extinction was caused by a meteor that plunged into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 65 million years ago. However, this doesn't mean that all the world's dinosaurs suffered an instant, fiery death. The meteor impact raised a huge cloud of dust that blotted out the sun, and caused the gradual demise of a) the earth's vegetation, b) the herbivorous dinosaurs that fed on that vegetation, and c) the carnivorous dinosaurs that fed on the herbivorous dinosaurs. This process may have taken as long as 200,000 years, still a blink of the eye in …show more content…
Dinosaurs were the only creatures that went extinct 65 million years ago.
Think about it for a second. Scientists believe the K/T meteor impact unleashed a blast of energy equivalent to millions of thermonuclear bombs; clearly, dinosaurs wouldn't have been the only animals to feel the heat. The key difference is, while numerous species of prehistoric mammals, prehistoric birds, plants and invertebrates were wiped off the face of the earth, enough species survived to repopulate the land and sea afterward. The dinosaurs, pterosaurs and marine reptiles weren't so lucky; they were exterminated down to the last individual (and not only because of the meteor impact, as we'll see