When did dinosaurs go extinct?
GROWING up, we were always told about how different species of dinosaurs once roamed the world and this is proved by fossil bones and teeth that archaeologists found.
Find out more about when dinosaurs went extinct and how.
When did dinosaurs go extinct?
It was revealed that Earth was dinosaurs’ home for at least 230 million years through fossil bones, teeth and trackways.
Dinosaurs have become extinct 66 million years ago and they were not the only ones to cease to exist.
Three-quarters of life on Earth was spanned out and the diversity amongst remaining life forms had drastically dropped.
Some marine reptiles such as mosasaurs, ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs and flying reptiles known as pterosaurs all vanished by the massive destruction that hit Earth.
How did dinosaurs die?
There are many theories to how dinosaurs might have died, and here we give you two of them.
The Alvarez Hypothesis
This hypothesis was named after father and son Luis and Walter Alvarez who were bough scientists.
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In 1980, they came up with a theory that said that a meteor the size of a mountain hit Earth and made a huge climate alteration as it filled the air with gas, dust and debris.
This is because many rocks that contain dinosaur fossils normally also have a high amount of metal iridium which is rare in Earth’s crust but often found in stony meteorites.
Their theory became more credible when they found a huge crater on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
It is called the Chicxulub crater and it is 93 miles wide and it is the same age as the dinosaur’s extinction.
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Lava flows
Other scientists claim that it might have been Earth itself that killed off dinosaurs.
Some claim that there was a huge lava flow on Earth, specifically the event of the Deccan Traps in India which are as old as the extinction of dinosaurs.
This was a lava eruption that is believed to have lasted a million years.
This theory is backed up by proving that Earth’s temperature was constantly changing and by the fact that volcanic eruptions are more frequent on Earth rather than meteor hits.