DinoFact
Why Did the Dinosaurs Go Extinct?
Facts about the end of the dinosaurs — the giant asteroid, the great extinction, and why birds survived.
- The asteroid left a giant crater near Mexico.
- That means dinosaurs never fully went extinct.
- Dust from the impact may have blocked out the sun.
- All the big dinosaurs died out a very long time ago.
- New kinds of dinosaurs appeared as old ones died out.
- The Chicxulub crater is more than 150 kilometres wide.
- Non-bird dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago.
- Birds were the only dinosaurs to survive the extinction.
- A huge asteroid struck Earth around the time dinosaurs died out.
- Birds were the only dinosaur lineage to survive the mass extinction.
- The extinction event is known as the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary.
- The asteroid struck near present-day Chicxulub on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula.
- The end-Cretaceous extinction wiped out about three-quarters of Earth's species.
- Dinosaurs rose to dominance after an extinction event at the end of the Triassic.
- The impact threw debris into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and cooling the planet.
- A thin global layer of iridium-rich clay marks the extinction event in the rock record.
- Iridium is rare on Earth's surface but common in asteroids, supporting the impact theory.
- Massive volcanic eruptions in the Deccan Traps in India may have contributed to the extinction.
- Non-avian dinosaurs went extinct about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
- A massive asteroid impact about 66 million years ago is the leading cause of the dinosaur extinction.
- Most dinosaurs lived nowhere near humans; non-avian dinosaurs died out about 66 million years before people existed.
- Teleocrater means 'complete basin'. It was a Middle Triassic carnivore from Tanzania — an early member of the dinosaur line.