Alain Bénéteau

Andrey Atuchin

Erik C. Omtvedt

Felipe A. Elias

Gerhard Boeggemann

Jin-Young Park

Dinosaur Extinction by Climate Changes

The extinction of Dinosaurs at the end of Mesozoic era about 65 million years ago is still a biggest mystery in science. What caused the extinction? How all of a sudden dinosaurs disappeared? What caused mass extinction event of K-T collision? Are the questions scientist still cannot answer with confidence? In fact, this extinction event not only extinct the whole species of dinosaurs but 70% of Earth's other species also got extinct with them. Nearly half of invertebrate ocean organisms, flying reptiles and plants were gone.

One of the several extinction of dinosaurs' theories that scientists pronounce to be true is Climate Change. Some scientist says that in the late Mesozoic era earth gradually changed in temperature over a long period of time which caused cooler and drier climate which dinosaurs were not able to adapt and died. But the question arise what changed the climate, then the argument comes that due to rising up of new mountain chains, many seas dried up, which caused world climate change. Many scientists also believe due to drop in temperature the plants died, which caused the death of plant eaters, and because of extinction of plant eater's layer in the food chain, other dinosaurs also died as well.

Another climate change theory says that, according to recent research, it was found that the sex of new offspring's of living reptiles like turtles and crocodiles is decided by the temperature of the nest. So if the it is also true for dinosaurs, it may be possible that cooling temperature due to climate change may have caused all new offspring of dinosaurs to be of same sex due to which the species would not be able to continue.

Now the question is did any of the dinosaurs survive the demise? Geologist rarely found dinosaur's fossils above the K-T Boundary. It is also believed that modern birds evolved from the carnivorous theropod dinosaurs so it is not fair to say that dinosaurs completely vanished. Whatever was the reason of demise of dinosaurs, the mystery still continues.