The End Of the Dinosaurs

What Was Going On Before The Asteroid?

This might seem irrelevant because when the asteroid struck, dinosaurs went extinct. And the extinct part isn’t even true! Just read some of my other articles to find out. Anyways, dinosaurs were still diverse but they weren’t at their peak as you might think. It’s like running out of plays in the play book. 

They were just staying the same, and one group of dinosaurs -the sauropods- were almost extinct in Europe and North America. This was called the sauropod hiatus. But not only the sauropods, but the ornithischians were starting to feel plain. They still were dominant, but still weren’t going to be much more diverse bunch all of a sudden, because (again) they’re out of ideas.

Asteroid Strikes

The asteroid struck about 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous. It was a catastrophic event, wiping out 75% of all life on earth. Contradictory to what many people think, this was not the most deadly extinction event. It was the end Permian mass extinction. Back to the K-t event. It’s called the K-t extinction event to differentiate it from the Cambrian period. But the K still does stand for the Cretaceous. The asteroid hit near the Yukon peninsula in Mexico. The blast hit the earth as strong as every nuclear weapon we have.

The asteroid was giant, at the size of mount Everest. That might not sound like much compared to the earth, but it still made a giant crater. Further more, it was traveling at 38,000 kilometers or about 18 meters per second. That’s faster than anything we have right now. Earth was also plunged in darkness which means countless generations were born in darkness.

After the Asteroid

Life was struggling but not as much as you might expect. Life was still there but nothing smaller than a dog survived. That also means many animals we associate with dinosaurs were long gone. Life also rebounded relatively quickly, in just about 1,500 years or even less. Again, might sound a lot but in geological terms, it’s just a blink of an eye.

Mammalian Rule

We all know the classic story of the asteroid bringing an end to the ruthless dinosaurs and then mammals taking the rule. This is false. The sebecidae- or crocs with legs- ruled. Then the terror birds which are dinosaurs by flesh and bones. Then the mammals came and finally the rule.

Mammals diversified rapidly and created iconic animals like the woolly mammoth and saber toothed cats ( which weren’t what we call cats at all). And then 1 million year ago, human ancestors came and just 10,000 years ago we came waltzing in with sticks and throwing them like toddlers.