Dinosaurs thrived in the warm temperatures and mild weather of what we call the Mesozoic Era. But 66 million years ago, the world’s climate drastically changed. Earth became like a Zach Snyder film—much colder and darker. Plants died, food became scarce, and three-quarters of the creatures on Earth—including most of the dinosaurs—went extinct.
We still debate what caused this relatively sudden change in climate. Two popular theories are an asteroid strike and the eruption of a giant volcano.
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Producer/Video by: Jason Lederman
Narrator: Jessica Boddy
Researcher: Jillian Mock
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Media: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) Warner Bros. Pictures, NASA, USGS, NOAA, US Department of Energy, Wikimedia Commons, Google Earth, Prelinger Archives
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Jack Jammen
September 26, 2019 at 7:20 pm
Will we be able to ever say roughly how much methane the dinosaurs put into the atmosphere?
srdavis37
September 29, 2019 at 11:18 pm
No. Of course not. We can’t even guesstimate how many dinosaurs there were. Remember, we only know of the dinos whose bones fell in just the right spot under just the right conditions to become fossils. There may have been entire branches of species that we haven’t discovered yet – or never will.
Jack Jammen
October 1, 2019 at 5:27 pm
srdavis37 How about layers of sediment, that shows the atmospheric conditions of their end times?
BnORailFan
September 27, 2019 at 12:51 am
We’re all paranoid of a killer asteroid impacting the earth in the near future but we probably wouldn’t be here now if one did in fact impact the earth 66 million years ago.
nickrich56
September 27, 2019 at 6:41 am
I guess out of these 2 choices volcanic activity is the best bet since big space rocks are far away and volcanoes are close.😏
Adam Jenssen
September 27, 2019 at 8:34 am
The answer is very plain and simple.
Purbita Saha
September 27, 2019 at 3:17 pm
Birds are dinosaurs!
JayD 05
September 28, 2019 at 7:19 am
Thank you for saying that
Þorsteinn Sigurðsson
September 27, 2019 at 6:49 pm
it is called loss of atmosphere!!! geniuses! 😉
JayD 05
September 28, 2019 at 7:20 am
Dinosaurs never died out yo ever heard of birds
JayD 05
September 30, 2019 at 2:03 am
No that’s just a translation of words Plus that guy you’re talking about he said all that stuff over 100 years ago when everyone thought they were big lizards now more than 100 years after that we have more knowledge of these amazing *not terrible*animals
MGTOWHub Project
September 30, 2019 at 2:24 am
@JayD 05 Yes, we all know the purple-green cuddly Barney. I think we may get lucky again and get some more Dino soft tissue that did not mineralize after 65 million years by some miracle and that can be sequenced. We do have some full DNA sequences of some birds. I predict that when compared, the idea that avians are dinosaurs would be laid to rest. The most likely case is that there is a remote common ancestry, but that is all.
JayD 05
September 30, 2019 at 2:31 am
Too bad we will most likely never get dinosaur DNA because DNA doesn’t last that long so with all the evidence we have now Points to birds being dinosaurs
MGTOWHub Project
September 30, 2019 at 3:07 am
@JayD 05 Well, collagen from T Rex soft tissue says “tastes like chicken”, because that seemed to be closest. However, no one compared it with extant reptiles. Maybe “tastes like gator” would be closer.
JayD 05
September 30, 2019 at 1:18 pm
Yeah but there’s no evidence of that so far what fits best with all of this is that birds are dinosaurs maybe one day will find some dinosaur DNA that is not broken that much and we will finally see whos right here
Robert Flinn
September 28, 2019 at 9:10 pm
The 2 camera effect, with the speaker looking at the other camera, is distracting and not needed, and is annoying.
Richard Hopkins
October 25, 2019 at 9:07 am
Like you said, that meteor was 6 miles across.. The Earth is 8 THOUSAND miles across. It would take 1, 300 of those meteors to span the entire diameter of earth. If the Earth was the size of a basketball, that meteor would be about half the size of a grain of rice. That space rock was tiny Compared to Earth, and it wiped out like half the planet. Let that sink in for a minute