Double Trouble: What Really Killed the Dinosaurs

[Phantom]

Provided by http://www.livescience.com/animals/0...volcanoes.html


Hey guys, I'm sure almost all of you have read something in your old Science Textbooks about the Dinosaur age, and the great mystery surrounding their mysterious demise millions of years ago. The textbooks say a Meteor or something to that effect killed them all but this article suggests that Meteors wasn't their only cause of death.


Instead of being driven to extinction by death from above, dinosaurs might have ultimately been doomed by death from below in the form of monumental volcanic eruptions.


The suggestion is based on new research that is part of a growing body of evidence indicating a space rock alone did not wipe out the giant reptiles.

The Age of Dinosaurs ended roughly 65 million years ago with the K-T or Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, which killed off all dinosaurs except those that became birds, as well as roughly half of all species on the planet, including pterosaurs. The prime suspect in this ancient murder mystery is an asteroid or comet impact, which left a vast crater at Chicxulub on the coast of Mexico.

Another leading culprit is a series of colossal volcanic eruptions that occured between 63 million to 67 million years ago. These created the gigantic Deccan Traps lava beds in India, whose original extent may have covered as much as 580,000 square miles ( 1.5 million square kilometers ), or more than twice the area of Texas.


Arguments over which disaster killed the dinosaurs often revolve around when each happened and whether extinctions followed. Previous work had only narrowed the timing of the Deccan eruptions to within 300,000 to 500,000 years of the extinction event.


New research suggests the mass extinction happened at or just after the biggest phase of the Deccan eruptions, which spewed 80% of the lava found at the Deccan Traps.


"It's the first time we can directly link the main phase of the Deccan Traps to the mass extinction," said Princeton University Paleontologist Gerta Keller.


What do you guys think of this? I think Volcanic activity may have played a part in the exinction of the Dinosaurs along with a Meteor that crashed down on the planet killing them for good.

[Ol' Fartsy]

There are alot of theories about how the dinosaurs died. But if there is any evidence in what really killed them, I would like to see it.

[Calcifer]

Theres alot of different theories as to what killed them, and they all come with their own proof to back it up so we can't really be sure. But it's scary to think the same can and probably will happen to use because of what we are doing to the earth. wee

[Ol' Fartsy]

Here is my far-fetched theory: The dinosaurs survived a meteor crash that sent the earth into a atmosphere and then the dinosaurs started to die and the "cavemen" came and ate the dinosaurs for a very long time.

[Cunnning Stunts]

Here's what I think happened:

120 million years ago, there was a terrible war. It was Dino on Dino action. Secret Death Squads were unleashed upon the herbivore population, reducing their numbers from in the millions to 0.

Then the carnivores realized the gravity of their mistakes and started to eat each other in order to survive. After a period of five years, there were but a handful of the strongest dinosaurs alive, all of whom were male. There was nothing the dinosaurs could do.

So, they started killing each other just for the sake of killing. Until the biggest T-Rex remained.
He had no one else to speak to, and became extremely lonely.

So he threw himself off the highest cliff, because no one wants to be the last of their kind.

[Frank_White]

Personally, I feel aliens killed the dinosaurs so that they could seed Earth with a docile, slave-population that would multiply over a few millenia and be retaken back to the mother planet for an eternity of hardship and toil.

[Sheepy]

well an intellectual answer i think that the meteor may have caused the volcanic eruptions...it hit the earths surface with such force that it may have caused the volcanoes to errupt...you never know what could have happened until the invent a time machine.

[Alpha]

I heard a theory once (by 'heard' I mean there was a geology lecture on this that I wasn't listening in), that massive volcanic events occurring at lithospheric 'lips' (tbh I don't really understand this, save to say they're massive eruptions that have occurred very rarely throughout the geologic record) could pump enough debris into the atmosphere to block the sun and stunt plant growth, thus cutting the food supply. The meteorite impact in the Yucatan peninsular is a scientific fact. In all likelihood, it would take a crap load of bad luck to wipe the dominant race of creatures off the face of the planet, so it probably involved both, maybe related, maybe coincidental.

[RagnaToad]

yo momm cause she dsad onethem