Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Mass extinction essay
Causes and effects of natural disasters
Mass extinction and its consequences
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Mass extinction essay
The mass extinction(s) were commonly caused by extreme climate change and animals couldn't adapt quickly enough to change.
90 percent of all the species have lived, died and are extinct.
The most commonly studied mass extinction was between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, when the dinosaurs disappeared on Earth.
When a species dies the earth has more room to form and evolve a new species.
Scientists are still unsure of what really happened and why these mass extinctions occur, they call them “unsolved mysteries.
Although volcanic eruptions and large asteroids and comets are used as explanations to mass extinctions
Both disasters would lead to a dirty environment, having a bunch of debri in the air.
Darkening skies can lasts months
…show more content…
That gives scientists an advantage of what happened and why all the dinosaurs died.
The extraterrestrial impact and a volcanic eruption caused the dinosaurs and half the animals and the planet to go extinct.
Link two http://www.history.com/topics/why-did-the-dinosaurs-die-out All what scientist have are theories, there is no exacted explanation of what happened to cause the 5 major extinctions.
Although scientists’ theories make a lot of sense and can be very believable.
Paleontologists’ believed that climate and geological changed interfered with the dinosaurs’ food supply.
A comet hit earth about the same time dinosaurs started dying.
Dinosaurs walked on earth for 160 million years and then disappeared 65 million years ago.
The extinction was called the Cretaceous-Tertiary or K-T
One theory was that smaller mammals ate the dinosaur eggs and reduced the dinosaur population.
Another theory is that the dinosaurs got too big for their tiny brains and they couldn't operate anymore.
Starvation was another theory, dinosaurs need a vast amount of food possibly cut short on
…show more content…
Scientists say that the asteroid or comet hit mexico was the reason why the dinosaurs are extinct.
This bout of volcanism has also been dated to about 65 million years ago and would have spread the iridium around the world, along with sunlight-blocking dust and soot and greenhouse gases.
Some scientists think that both an asteroid and a volcanic eruption caused the excretion of dinosaurs.
Link four http://www.livescience.com/26933-chicxulub-cosmic-impact-dinosaurs.html The main suspect behind this catastrophe is a cosmic impact from an asteroid or comet, an idea first proposed by physicist Luis Alvarez and his son geologist Walter Alvarez.
Link five https://www.britannica.com/animal/dinosaur “The name dinosaur comes from the Greek words deinos (“terrible” or “fearfully great”) and sauros (“reptile” or “lizard”).”
In order to understand extinction, it is necessary to understand the basic fossil record of
The possibility if a meteor strike as the cause of extinctions is discarded, something that most specialists agree on. There is no evidence of any meteor crater big enough or recent enough to be accountable for it; there are no “elements that are common extraterrestrially but less so on Earth, such as iridium, and no sign of a tsunami or other phenomena following the impact.” The extinctions where also very selective and occurred over a very long period of time. If a “one shot” catastrophe had been the cause it would have affected all species at the same time and in similar
...r optimum temperatures, hot climate caused the dinosaurs to heat up beyond their optimum. However, the heat didn’t kill them, but sterilized the males, because their testes functioned at certain temperatures. Gould argues that this theory is untestable, and the experiments with the influence of extreme temperatures on modern alligators do not necessarily explain the extinction of dinosaurs. Furthermore, many questions are not answered because of the absence of evidence. Gould states that this theory is another example of bad science.
The question of what caused the extinction of megafauna during the Late Pleistocene period is one that archaeologists have struggled to answer for decades, but why should it matter? Discovering with certainty the cause of megafaunal extinction would simultaneously prove or disprove any of the proposed implications of each existing theory regarding this massive extinction.
...ories of why dinosaurs went extinct abound, and as there is no theory yet to be truly confirmed as the “right one”, my theory of dinosaur cannibalism is also purely anecdotal. The discovery of the cannibalistic Majungatholus atopus in Madagascar is an important scientific find because it confirms a long-standing theory of cannibalism among certain carnivorous dinosaurs. Behavioral patterns of extinct animals are difficult to establish; however, these bones give authentication to previous unfounded beliefs about the ancient feeding practices of some dinosaurs.
We use dinosaurs to represent the changes in nature that have occurred throughout time. Studies found that although the “oldest rock did not show evidence of life, the progression of plant and animal life that changed in recognizable intervals, from ancient life, age of reptiles to the age of mammals” (Dino Nature Metaphor, slide 6), measured the age of the earth. When we think of dinosaurs in relation to nature, we think of that very powerful force that controls the cycle of life. Nature was able to yield such magnificent ferocious creatures that walked the earth and then take them back when they served nature’s purpose. Dinosaurs fit perfectly in nature’s constant
...and not having enough food. Carvings and drawings have been found that support the idea of humans and dinosaurs living at the same time. The idea of dinosaur extinction is always up for debate. There is good evidence for both theories but they are still unclear as to what really happened to the dinosaurs. (Ron Hutchinson et al., August 20, 2013)
Millions and millions of years ago the continents lay together as one super-continent known as Pangea. As time went on and the plates underneath the Earth began to separate, the continents land moved towards the poles where glaciation occurred. Glaciation is the process in which glaciers were formed during the ice age. Glaciation causes a drop in temperature which in turn causes water to freeze and form many layers of ice (http://palaeo.gly.bris.ac.uk/Palaeofiles/Permian/intro.html, 1). Due to this layering of ice that has occurred at both poles it has not been easy to discover new dinosaur fossils. However, in a press release of the National Science Foundation researchers, working in two distinct sites of Antarctica found what seem to be fossil remains of two different dinosaurs that had previously never been introduced to the world of science (http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=52, 1).
photosynthesis. From there it would not have been long for all the dinosaurs to have been
...pdated 1995, accessed 3 Sept. 2000), Dino Buzz – What killed The Dinosaurs ? – Current Arguments,
The Jurassic period is known as one of the most interesting periods of time in earth’s history, mainly for the awe-inspiring creatures many of which have gone extinct, the most remarkable being the dinosaurs. Life in the ocean during this time was also extremely diversified and amazing for the creatures it beheld. The Jurassic occurred from 199.6 to 145.5 million years ago, following the Triassic Period and preceding the Cretaceous Period within the Mesozoic Era. The supercontinent of Pangea began to drift apart during this time. Right before the Jurassic period began, a major extinction event occurred wiping out much of the life on earth. The events that unfolded afterwards gave life to a new planet.
Some scientists believe that mammals out competed dinosaurs for food and other resources. The last theory that dinosaurs died due to a large amount of volcanism comes up in scientists list of theories as well. Many different theories of why dinosaurs went extinct include extinction by asteroid, mammals outcompeting dinosaurs, climate change and volcanism. The most popular theory of dinosaur extinction, the asteroid theory, says that dinosaurs died out because of a single, giant asteroid. They say that the asteroid that struck the earth near the Gulf of Mexico went 43,000 mph and spanned six miles wide (Erdman).
...a faster rate than ever. Data from graphs evidently prove this theory. From the graph the greatest leap of extinction is seen 1920s till now. This trend line is drastically increasing (figure 4). Experts say that approximately half of the world’s current species will be entirely gone by the end of the century, hence proving that we are in the middle of an anthropogenic mass extinction.
As stated above, there are a multitude of causes for this “mass extinction”, and most all of them are caused by humans. One such causality is overfishing. Everyone loves to eat fish. However, with overfishing, humans are collecting more fish than we can consume as a population. Overfishing is when people collect more fish from the o...
Because the CO2 levels are rising, the ice caps are melting and many more animals can become extinct. When pangea started splitting, there was a lot of volcanic activity, which cause the death of many dinosaurs. A meteor also hit earth and the mass extinction of many land and marine animals happened. There have been five mass extinctions in Earth’s history. The worst one wiped out ninety-six percent of marine life and seventy percent of land organisms. This took millions of years to recover.