How Dinosaurs Went Extinct
The Guessing Game: How Dinosaurs Went Extinct
In the early nineteen hundreds, dinosaur fossils were discovered and recognized around the globe. Greedy scientists and civilians, searching for their own prize skeleton, rushed to rip bones out of the ground, destroying the fossils as they went. It was not until later in the century that scientists and paleontologists began pondering how such widespread creatures disappeared. Currently, paleontologists debate the two main hypotheses of how the classic dinosaurs died: from volcanic activity or an asteroid impact. Although they result in the same outcome, the volcanic and asteroid hypotheses differ in key elements: the actual event, the environment's stress, and the impact on life.
Physical evidence left behind in each scenario supports each possible explanation for the massive extinction responsible for wiping out the dinosaurs. Scientists that support the volcanic activity hypothesis believe the massive volcanic activity lasted approximately 500,000 years eventually ending dinosaurs reign on earth. The lava flows filled over 480,000 cubic miles, devastating areas over the entire globe. For example, The Decan Trap, a famous site of Cretaceous tectonic activity, is up to 8,000 feet deep, and it averaged between thirty-three and 164 feet deep. Fires raged across the lands. Those that believe in the asteroid impact, on the other hand, project a six mile wide meteorite moved at speeds from 50,000 mph to 150,000 mph and busted into Earth's atmosphere at the end of the Cretaceous Period. The sudden impact near the present day Yucatan Peninsula ejected 5,000 cubic miles of debris into the atmosphere and created an earthquake of magnitude thirteen sending tidal waves, 250 to 300 feet high, around the world. The crater that decimated 50 to 60 miles of earth 13 to 25 miles deep. Supporters of the asteroid hypothesis, in addition to volcanic hypothesizers, believe lands were...
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