You have probably heard about dinosaurs a million times, especially growing up. But do you know why they became extinct? Many people that know a lot about dinosaurs do not actually know these reasons and that is why our friends at Dinosaur.org are here to educate you during this article about what killed the dinosaurs so long ago.
The story all began 65 million years ago. Yes, that was not a mistype that happened, dinosaurs have not been around for millions and millions of years. The different types of dinosaurs slowly started becoming extinct until the last non-avian dinosaurs then finally also went extinct. This ended up causing a lot of disruption to a lot of things around it. For example, there were dinosaurs that lived in the ocean, and when they were no longer there which ended up causing a lot of hard times for plankton. This caused some sea sponges to suddenly disappear. You don’t realize how much is impacted once one animal is taken away from the cycle.
Now that we know a little bit more about dinosaurs it’s time to dive into learning more about how they actually disappeared. Did it happen all at once? What exactly happened. That is what we are about to talk about.
Scientists have talked about two different versions of what happened causing dinosaurs to become extinct. Both of these have scientific proof however it cannot be confirmed which one is exactly correct. Depending on what you read will help you determine what you truly believe happened. We are not going to biased and instead share both sides of the argument.
The two arguments are that an asteroid or a comet hit the earth or that there was a massive volcano that erupted and wiped them out. Both of these situations would mean that the food chain would be disrupted. Once everything went back to somewhat normal, the dinosaurs were no longer there.
We are now going to first talk more about both the asteroid theory. The thoughts of this are that there is a layer of rock that would have been extinct right around the event that occurred. This layer of rock ended up being found all around planet earth including the ocean. It’s important to remember that Iridium is not common to be found on earth so this was rare that it was everything. The impact of this may have meant that the dinosaurs on earth may have become extinct.
The next scientific theory is that the earth is rich with iridium. This is the source that has magma and scientists have spoken stating that there was a flood like a volcano that happened for more than 1.5 miles and was extremely thick. It was 1 million square miles thick. This volcano seemed to happen around 65 million years ago which was a similar time frame to when the dinosaurs became extinct. It’s a hard thing to think about because although that could seem like the same time frame, it also could be 10 million years different. With that said, if they were right at the same time, this exactly explains what happened to the dinosaurs because there is no way they could have lived through that.
Both of these theories have been around for a very long time and many scientists either do not know what to believe or have a specific theory regarding one of the ideas. The final reason that scientists believe is that there was a shift that happened slowly in the climate which resulted in the sea levels changing.
Regardless of the reason why dinosaurs became extinct, we do know that they once were on planet earth and no longer are. It’s fun to imagine what they would have been doing here, how they lived, what their personalities were like, and learn more about history through learning about dinosaurs. How they became extinct is important, but it is also important to learn about what dinosaurs used to be like when they were on this planet.
As you can see, there has been a lot of evidence, a lot of time spent, and a lot of money put into figuring out what made dinosaurs become extinct. The bad news is that these have not got us closer to finding out the real truth. It’s important that we learn as much as we can about these creatures as it teaches us about how our planet used to be. Teaching children about dinosaurs is an excellent way of teaching them about the world and about history. Try and incorporating dinosaur games with your child so that they begin to understand these things. Dinosaurs are the perfect way to combine history and fun.
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