Why Do Mammals Survive The Execution Of Dinosaurs?

So what killed the dinosaurs? Without having any background education in science it is hard for the general public to comprehend such matters and they rely on the knowledge of the scientists in this field. Although there has been much research on the subject nobody has come up with a conclusive answer. And we are left to read the countless articles, all having their own opinions as to the mass extinction. One such theory is that a shift in the solar system could have caused the mass destruction. According to an article published in Nature magazine,

Faith and Surovell hypothesize a statistical analysis will uncover whether a temporally spread out extinction or a quick extinction killed North America’s Pleistocene mammals, a debate that has split paleontologists and archaeologists into two diametrically opposed sides for years. (Faith and Surovell, 2009). The debate on the extinction method has been heated due to the absence of fossil records of 19 of the 35 genera (Faith and Surovell, 2009). Faith and Surovell test whether finding only 16 genera in the fossil record in the terminal timeframe (between 12,000 and 10,000 radiocarbon years ago or between about 11,800 - 9,400 B.C.) is a result of a sampling error, or an extinction happening over a long period of time (Faith and Surovell, 2009).

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for over 65 million years and thankfully for the human race, they became extinct. Ultimately, only a major catastrophe could completely wipe out an entire species, let alone an entity of dinosaurs and the debacle on the causes of dinosaur extinction have flooded the minds of paleontologists for centuries. Geologist and zoologist Stephen Jay Gould published “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of Dinosaurs,” to compare scientific and speculative causes of dinosaur decimation. Personally, I found this passage very informational and enjoyed reading it. Gould provides three theories that capture the reader’s curiosity, allowing room for pondering in one’s mind.

The question of what caused the extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period is one that archaeologists have struggled to answer for decades, but why should it matter? Discovering with certainty the cause of megafaunal extinction would

From the trees to the grasses to the microbes to the animals, all life on earth is interconnected. Just as the trees are connected to the microbes in the dirt, the climate is connected to every living thing on this planet. The success of animals has always depended on the success of plants, known as the producers in the food supply chain. The changing climate has had a powerful effect upon evolution, including the evolution of primates. This essay explores the proliferation and the demise of primate species from the Paleocene Epoch to the Miocene Epoch by comparing and contrasting the physical and behavior differences between the primates of each period and how the ecological conditions of the period allowed for their selection.

Shooting a prehistoric animal sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Traveling through time to shoot said animal and to boast about being able to shoot, say, a dinosaur to your friends even if they won’t believe you. In “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury, people in the future are able to do that with a time machine, but there are strict rules. In this short story alone, there are many examples of foreshadowing, such as the talk about dying on the way to the dinosaur age, the warning “don’t step off the path”, and the title itself.

Imagine going back in time to hunt an enormous Tyrannosaurus Rex for the first time. How would someone react? How would someone feel? Would they follow all of the rules given to them? Would they survive?

It is estimated that mammoths had the largest biome on the plant at an estimated 1 square kilometer per mammoth (Zimov, 2014). Herbivores of the time ranged from under 45 kilograms to well over 1000 kg, making for a wide range of diversity within the speciation (graph below). While many of these mammals were preyed upon by the carnivores, some were simply too large to be killed by single predators, causing them to be relatively immune to predation (Rodriguez, Alberdi, Azanza, Prado, 2006).

The reading and the lecture are both theories of why dinasours were endotherms or cold blooded aninmals. Whereas as the author of the reading states that there is not enough evidence to assume that dinosaurs were endotherms. The lecture casts doubt on the main points made in the reading by providing three reasons.

Disease would have been devastating to dinosaurs because they wouldn’t have built up an immune system and they breed very slowly. Bugs would have simply transferred the disease to all the dinosaurs until they were wiped out, but mammals were able to survive simply because the diseases didn’t affect

There is a food cycle being affected in this situation. Their food chain can not be completed changing the reaction of dinosaurs so the true behavior would not be observed. Not only can this cause many ethical problems in the real world aspect but

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

The entirety of Earth’s ecosystem was affected by the K-Pg extinction, caused by volcanoes, oceanic shifts, and ultimately, an asteroid. Lucky for humans, mammals capitalized on the opportunity

The biggest mystery surrounding the dinosaur is how did they die? For over 130 million years dinosaurs ruled the earth. Then 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, they died out.

They say as mammals continued to evolve, they drove the dinosaurs into extinction (“What Killed the Dinosaurs”). “Not only did mammals likely compete with dinosaurs for resources, many species survived the end-Cretaceous extinction and subsequently came to dominate Earth.” (“What Killed the Dinosaurs?”). This is primarily because the early mammals were a lot smaller than the mammals that exist today. “Some of the world's earliest mammals were the multituberculates, a group of small rodent like animals that first emerged on Earth about 165 million years ago.” (Welsh, Jennifer). Scientists predict that any mass extinction event that caused animals to go extinct affected larger animals than it did the smaller animals, such as mammals ("Dinosaurs Became Extinct 'due to Laying Eggs'"). Mammals remained small for almost 100 million years, while they out competed small and baby dinosaurs for food, shelter and resources until they were extinct. Once the dinosaurs were out of the way mammals were able to evolve and grow large in size like the mammals that exist today today (LiveScience). Fossil evidence sheds some light on this theory as well. Fossils of mammals believed to date back to about eighty five million years ago show that mammals began to change rapidly and grow. “This matches up with other mammal groups, including recently discovered species from the Late Cretaceous (between 100 million and 65 million years ago) showing highly specialized