Why Did Dinosaur Extinction

Stephen Gould’s essay “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs” completely agrees with Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb’s essay “Argument, Critical Thinking, and Rationality.” Gould’s essay deals with three theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs, two of which he argues are entirely invalid because they are not in accordance with the basic rules of argument laid out by Williams and Colomb in their essay. Gould also states that the third theory of dinosaur extinction, natural disaster, follows all the rules that Williams and Colomb espouse, and thus is a sound argument. Gould, Williams, and Colomb all state that the world has a problem with irrational arguments being shoved down people’s throats, and call for a

Nobody knows for sure exactly how the dinosaurs became extinct. However scientists have speculated for decades about possible events that caused the dinosaurs to die out. Possibilities range from asteroids, to volcanoes, to climate changes. One of the more popular or well-known extinction theories involves the belief that an asteroid struck the Earth, causing devastating effects, and triggering mass extinctions around the end of the Cretaceous period.

In the two essays being discussed we learn that science has a vast range of definitions. Science is the effort to understand (or to understand better), the history of the natural world and how the natural world works with observable physical evidence as the base of understanding. Science is about how the hypothesis is developed and how well it is defended.

It is hard to imagine that millions of years ago, the Earth was not dominated by humans, but by Dinosaurs. These great Beast’s, who were as big or bigger than cars, roamed the land. Some were giant killing machines, like the Tyrannosaurus Rex.Some are even alive today, while many people do not even notice. There have been countless theories as to how the dinosaurs became extinct.

The Cretaceous mass extinction is the most well-known case of meteorite impact on the earth, but it certainly is not the only one. It is merely the most well-known. Due to the impact, debris entered earth's atmosphere and caused the plant life of the time to die off due to the lack of sunlight to survive. This made food much more scarce for the species that were dominant at the time. The competition was simply too much for them, and as the plant life died out, so did the herbivores and then the carnivores died out as well. Not only the land was impacted, however, the sea life was affected heavily by this impact as well. The lack of sunlight caused the oceans to become colder, causing the habitats of many marine animals to be drastically altered

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction or K-T extinction, which marks the Late Cretaceous, is a massive and large-scale extinction of animal and plant species that occurred over a short period of time 66 million years ago.

The age of the planet Earth is estimated to be about four point six billion years old. Life on Earth is estimated to have started one billion years later. Evolution has taken place since then. Evolving life from simple forms into more complex forms through the course of time. It all began with single celled organisms, prokaryotes. Later evolving in a period of two hundred million years, cyanobacteria began to produce photosynthesis. And life went on, evolving, adapting to its home. However through this course of time, mass extinctions have taken place on planet Earth. One of the most recent mass extinctions, has as a matter of fact left various amounts of evidence of the creatures which roamed the Earth at that time. Such magnificent creatures which varied from a very small size to giant sizes. Creatures which are now known to humanity as dinosaurs. The name of this extinction was the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction. This extinction took place roughly sixty five million years ago. It has not been too long since this incident compared to the life span of the Earth. And yet it is still unclear how this extinction occurred. Paleontologists to this day, debate on how this extinction occurred. A major factor on what caused this extinction to occur was an impact of an asteroid. Another theory such as sea level regression is considered to be the blame for the extinction. Sea level regression is the drop of sea levels which aids to explain the marine mass extinction, however

There have been 5 mass extinctions in Earth’s existence. The names of these are (from most recent to least recent): Cretaceous–Paleogene, Triassic–Jurassic, Permian–Triassic, Late Devonian, and Ordovician–Silurian. The most well known mass extinction, Cretaceous-Paleogene, was theorized to have occurred through a massive comet or asteroid impact. A cold winter created by the impacting object forbid any plants and plankton to carry out photosynthesis. During this time, about three quarters of all life went extinct. This happened approximately 66 million years ago. Most life forms went extinct, with some ectothermic species and tetrapods weighing less than 25 pounds. Although everything seemed to look hopeless, adaptive radiation caused evolution

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction occurred about 210 million years ago, killing about 80 percent of all living species (“End-Triassic Extinction”). Most species were hit hard, but there were no major full-on extinctions. Still, cephalopods, sponges, corals, reptiles, and pollen and spore producing plants were hit hard. The dinosaurs, however, were lucky and survived the extinction intact. This allowed them to reign supreme for the next geological epoch (“End-Triassic Extinction”). During the time of the Triassic-Jurassic extinction, Pangea was in the process of breaking apart. This caused major volcanic activity to occur, one of the prevailing theories as to what caused this extinction (“End-Triassic Extinction”). Like during the Permian-Triassic

Mass extinction of the Dinosaurs the most dramatic extinction in the history of the Earth. ( national geographic, 2015 ) The dinosaur extinction could have been sudden or gradual depending on the cause. Scientists have thoroughly researched and finally found two major options, the asteroid impact theory and the volcanic theory, that have many similar qualities, but on the other hand are very different. These two theories could have possibly caused the extinction many years ago.

65 million years ago a mass extinction of the dinosaurs took place marking the end of the Cretaceous Period when dinosaurs lived and the beginning of the Tertiary Period when no dinosaurs remained (“Dinosaurs”). This period is also known as the Cretaceous/Tertiary, or K/T Boundary (“Dinosaurs”). Just what caused the mass extinction is still up for debate but the two main theories are either an impact from a huge asteroid or massive strain if

The earth has existed for about 4.6 billion years; the geologic scale divides all of these years into sections, much like chapters in a book. Each of these sections is unique because it shows all of the changes on earth’s surface throughout the years. The largest of these sections on the geologic scale is eons. Eons are also divided into another two sections call ears. Eras are then divided into periods and then periods are divided into epochs. The reasons why the sections have been divided are either because major organisms developed or went extinct. Organisms go extinct because they either run out of space or food, or the environment changes making it hard for some organisms to survive the new environment (Ghose). Dinosaurs started developing after a mass extinction of the Paleozoic Era just about 125 million years ago. Dinosaurs lived through the Mesozoic Era then later died off during another mass extinction about 65 million years ago, starting the beginning of the Cenozoic Era. Almost all dinosaurs and half of the other plants and animals went extinct, some scientist think that an asteroid hit the earth wiping out everything in sight. At the beginning of the Cenozoic Era, which still continues today, scientist have a better understanding of this era because humans are living through it and are able to document everything that happens throughout the years. (Gammon)

Dinosaur extinction: An analysis of events and theories that possibly led to the dinosaurs' demise.

Nobody can really say what actually eliminated the species, although everyone has their very own idea. Asteroid impact, atmospheric changes (hot to cold), catastrophic eruptions and astronomical events (supernovas etc.). Some have ventured that early mammal inhabitation slowly “pushed” the dinosaurs to extinction. The most favored theory in the scientific field is that of the meteor impact. As always though, knowing when is part of discovering how and why.

Rapid climate change also ends up on the suspect list of possible dinosaur extinction events. During the latter part of the Cretaceous Period continents broke up causing volcanoes to erupt and fill the sky with gas and ash resulting in a drastic climate change (“Dinosaurs Climate Change and Biodiversity”). The shifting of continents changed the Earth’s landscape, altering weather patterns and overall climate (“Dinosaur Extinction Theories”). Also, over a long period of time, climate gradually changed. Ocean habits changed, temperatures grew much more extreme causing scorching summers and frigid winters (Norell, Dingus, and Gaffney). Radical temperature changes like these led to a green-house effect, making life for the dinosaurs a lot