February 17, 2022 - The lack of dinosaur fossils above the K-Pg layer are a strong indicator that the meteorite that left the iridium deposits also killed (or helped kill) the dinosaurs. ... I've been to the Royal Tyrell Museum in Drumheller Alberta which is the ...

How did dinosaurs become extinct? Explore the Cretaceous extinction event and the role of the Chicxulub impact in the death of dinosaurs (except birds).

In fact, he says we may never know the exact cause of extinction. “We have good circumstantial evidence,” says Sharpton. “In a general sense, we have it nailed down, the case is closed. But as to the particular cause of the extinction, be it dust, sulfur, CO2, or smoke, we don’t know.

When you look at key papers about the asteroid impact the kids are referring to, you’ll learn that it defined the transition from the Cretaceous to the Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary ~66 million years ago. Before the discovery of the asteroid, there wasn’t a single agreed upon theory on what caused the 5th global mass extinction. Not only did this mass extinction kill off the dinosaurs, but it also allowed the age of the mammals to begin.

Find out why most dinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period. Birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction.

4 days ago - If their existence past the K–Pg boundary can be confirmed, these hadrosaurids would be considered a dead clade walking. The scientific consensus is that these fossils were eroded from their original locations and then re-buried in much later sediments (also known as reworked fossils). Most paleontologists regard birds as the only surviving dinosaurs (see Origin of birds).

February 20, 2024 - I recently organized a large international gathering of paleontologists who met to hash out exactly what we know about why the dinosaurs went extinct. We used the most up-to-date inventory of dinosaur diversity to examine evolutionary trends over time, reviewed the latest information on the timing of the extinction and took a long look at the many environmental changes occurring around the time the dinosaurs disappeared. To our surprise, our team of nearly a dozen dinosaur experts—often an argumentative bunch—came to a clear consensus: as popular wisdom has it, the extinction was abrupt, and an asteroid was primarily to blame.

February 24, 2021 - AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers believe ... into Earth 66 million years ago by finding a key piece of evidence: asteroid dust inside the impact crater....

December 10, 2016 - By comparing iridium in the boundary with known rates of iridium deposition, Alvarez discovered how long the extinction event lasted. His findings shocked the world. The concentration of iridium in the boundary layer was so off-the-charts high ...

Two main camps exist in paleontology today, each having a different view of what killed the dinosaurs and other organisms at the K-T boundary. Controversy has surrounded the topic since 1980; it has become difficult for the public (and the scientific world at large) to understand the issue ...

Prior to 1980, the exact cause of dinosaurs’ demise was unknown; one hypothesis proposed that they were killed off by massive volcanic eruptions.

June 13, 2025 - Times were tough for the dinosaurs: their world was starting to cool, and they faced significant competition for dwindling food supplies. Ecological diversity shrank as species after species finally succumbed. ... Paleontologists admit that they still have many questions about the K-Pg extinction event and its impact on the prehistoric world. They don’t know why some species died quickly while others managed to hang on or exactly how the event affected individual ecosystems around the globe—especially those far from the asteroid’s impact.

Introduction | Asteroid Impact | Volcanism | Mammal Competition | Continental Drift | Conclusion · Hypothesis: Asteroid Impact

4 days ago - The date of the impact coincides with the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary (commonly known as the K–Pg or K–T boundary). It is now widely accepted that the devastation and climate disruption resulting from the impact was the primary cause of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, a mass extinction of 75% of plant and animal species on Earth, including all non-avian dinosaurs.

August 16, 2024 - The Chicxulub event – the giant impact that ended the reign of non-avian dinosaurs, clearing the way for mammalian life to rise – was triggered by an asteroid from a region of the Solar System out past the orbit of Jupiter, the cold, dark ...