Q. Why did the dinosaurs disappear? What made dinosaurs extinct?

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Velociraptor means ‘swift seizer’. It also had feathers and was much smaller than depicted in Steven Spielberg’s film Jurassic Park.

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A. Dinosaurs, along with many other groups of animals, suddenly disappeared from the planet around 65 million years ago. Why this happened is a question that has baffled scientists since dinosaur fossils were first discovered. The answer to “why did the dinosaurs become extinct “is that nobody knows for sure.

There are however a number of theories to account for the mass extinction. Probably the most popular one is the impact or asteroid theory, proposed in 1980 by American geologist Alvarez and his team. According to this, a huge asteroid/comet/meteorite collided with the Earth causing massive amounts of dust and debris to be thrown up into the atmosphere, blocking out much of the sun and making the Earth too dark and cold for the dinosaurs to survive. There is evidence suggesting that such an object crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. A similar yet less popular theory relates to multiple collisions with the Earth from comet showers.

Some scientists suggest that volcanic activity could have had a role to play in the extinction of dinosaurs, pumping enough ash into the sky to prevent sunlight reaching Earth and/or causing massive global warming through the release of ‘greenhouse’ gases. The Deccan Traps in India (one of the world’s largest volcanic features) are believed to have been formed through volcanic activity at around the same time the dinosaurs vanished.

Another theory is a severe ice age, whilst others have proposed that disease could have killed off the dinosaurs. And some scientists have suggested that climate change and lower oxygen levels – to which dinosaurs could not adapt - might have led to led to their demise.

Perhaps one or a combination of the above theories is correct but, for now, the exact reason why dinosaurs became extinct remains unanswered.

Source(s): Lifestudiesonline.com, Darwin.bio.uci.edi, Newworldencyclopedia.com, Wikipedia.com