Questions about theories concerning the Mass Extinction of Dinosaurs...

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bandwidthbandit

Registered Senior Member
Dinosaurs are often said to have gone extinct due to some major event such as an Asteroid impact or a Huge Volcanic Eruption in modern scientific theory. What doesn't add up to me about all of these theories is how did Mammals and birds, the now supposed descendats of Dinosaurs, manage to survive them? I know mammals were for the most part very small rodent type creatures at the time and could crawl into a whole and ride it out for some time. But with no sunlight and extreme temperatures, just some of the after effects of such events, how could enough food be available to support a viable breeding population of Mammals that could go on to dominate the world?
 
About 75% of all life died off, who died and who lived seems to be random because modern paleontology does not know enough about the biology of dinosaurs to understand why a mammals and birds survive. Perhaps Dinosaurs were not as warm blooded as birds and mammals and could not survive the cold, but then why did reptiles survive? who knows? It like asking why all the trilobites and nautilus went extinct during Late Ordovician and Late Devonian mass extinctions, they were very successful for there time then they and many others simply disappear from the fossil record above a certain point in the sediments. The cause of extinction in both causes in theorized but why did these guys dye off and others survive is more of a biological question that simply cannot be answered do to the lack of prehistoric biological knowledge.
 
Move this thread to the paranormal section so i can explain that: the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused via alien's who's craft reactor core breached leaking huge amounts of radiation causing mass extinction, feeling bad for all the ickle animals they'd killed off said aliens decided to recreate life from the remaining genetic samples they could find on earth*



*Disclaimer: all this information is garbage and should only be believed by the totally or partially gullible
 
i thought another reason was simply that the grasses and such that the dinosaurs ate were changing, and the dinosaurs didnt change with them. I remember one of my geology lecturers saying this years ago.
 
True, that's one of the possibilities
I wonder why dino fossils don't contain their 'death diaries'...... Why is it that anything that kills them cannot leave something in their remains?
 
Originally posted by curioucity
True, that's one of the possibilities
I wonder why dino fossils don't contain their 'death diaries'...... Why is it that anything that kills them cannot leave something in their remains?
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maybe it didn't kill them, but prevented them from reproducing effectively.
 
Wow, sterilization...... I've never thought of that.....
Suddenly I remember something...
Considering that some reptiles nowadays are found out to be ancient, how can these types of reptiles survived the dino wiping? Comodo dragon is one of them)
 
possibly lizards were able to burrow underground, and protect themselves from whatever.

Maybe bird survived because dinosaurs evolved into them.

Mammels had that fur-coat thing going.
 
Maybe bird survived because dinosaurs evolved into them.
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Sorry but bird evolved from a very small group of dinosaurs early Jurassic, all the other blood lines of dinosaurs died off either of there own accord or at the giant meteor end of the Cretaceous period.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/geo_timeline.html
"Archaeopteryx walks the Earth" walked?!?! don't they mean "Archaeopteryx flew upon the Earth"?
 
There are still reptiles left probably because there used to be a very high amount of reptiles before the major event. The major event's extreme cold conditions annihilated much of the cold blooded replites, but a few survived. After the major event, conditions were more habitable for mammals and birds. That is why there are many mammals now, for after millions of years they popullated and evolved much. Reptiles are more fishlike than mammals, they were here before mammals, which we all know, and had alot more time to populate and evolve into new reptiles (pre-major event).(thats why I think there used to be ALOT of replites). When I say "more time" I'm comparing reptiles to that of the mammals, which consisted mainly of rodents before the major event, and conditions were too difficult them to evolve into fitter animals. The major event obviously turned the tables, because now that there were a huge decline in reptiles, there was more food and area for the mammals to live. The major event gave mammals the chance to take lead because mammals are superior, there were just was too many reptiles before the major evnet to give mammals a chance populate and evolve to better forms. It's good to be warm blooded.
 
Originally posted by WellCookedFetus
Sorry but bird evolved from a very small group of dinosaurs early Jurassic, all the other blood lines of dinosaurs died off either of there own accord or at the giant meteor end of the Cretaceous period.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/geo_timeline.html
"Archaeopteryx walks the Earth" walked?!?! don't they mean "Archaeopteryx flew upon the Earth"?
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I asume your final question is hypothetical, WC. :confused:


as for the bird evolution thing - that was my point. People tend to assume that there were tons of dino's,then a big rock hit the earth, and everything that didn't have fur or feathers fell over dead from the shock and awe. There are many methods through which the dinosaurs dissapeared - evolution, desease, climate change, compitition from other dinos, (there's even one theory involving the methane from dino farts :rolleyes: )... and lastly, a possible big impact. More species of dinos dissapeared in the millenia prior the the time of the impect theory than in that geological moment.

In reference to the evolution of flight, there is some interesting research going on about the chances that feathers were first evolved as a horizonal lift mechanism to aid in running up steep inclines. Flight was only a postcursor to that end.
 
If you want to know about dinosaurs I'm the one to ask.

First of all what river-wind said about dinosaurs already declining before the asteroid hit is true.

From what I remember there was more than 60 known species of dinosaurs at the start of the Cretaceous and at the end of the Cretaceous before the asteroid hit there was less then 20 known species.

This shows that dinosaurs were already getting rarer even before the asteroid hit.

The reason for this is not know for sure but could have been many things like:

Methane gas from the oceans causing climate problems.
Diseases
Volcanic eruptions
Changing plant life
A close by Super Nova
Or a bunch of other stuff
 
I don't think changing plant life was it.
All plants and animals just naturally change together, thats what evolution is. If plants changed, dinosaurs just would have changed with them.

Although I suppose plants could have just "won".
In south america many of the plants evolved to simply be too poisonous, the only herbivores that survived are the ones that figured out you could fight the poison from the plants by washing them down with certain types of clay.
Maybe dinosaurs were too dumb to figure that out?

I don't know, I stand by the theory that there were many factors, all coincidentally coming at bad times and they just piled up and became too much.
The fact that many reptiles survived and only dinosaurs went extinct kind of rules out an asteroid being the only factor. Dinosaurs weren't "extra" cold blooded. A major blocking out of the sun would have killed all cold blooded animals indiscriminately.
We still have cold blooded animals so any asteroid hit there was mustn't have been as catastrophic as some have estimated.

Tiny weather changes can have huge effects of wildlife you wouldn't even think about. For example if the galopogas islands get a little more rain one year then usual, whole generations of sea lions can be wiped out from starvation due to fish leaving the area.

As I said I think many factors played a part, perhaps many plants got over an evolutionary hump that dinosaurs couldn't climb, a new disease might have popped up and spread steadily, and then weather changes might have taken out the survivors.
Something along those lines.
Animals go extinct all the time but mass extinctions are puzzling.
One thing for sure is no mass extinction has been as swift as the one we are experiencing(and creating) right now.
 
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