Dinosaur Extinction.

Essay by Nelly25mattHigh School, 10th gradeA+, August 2005

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The extinction of the dinosaurs has become a never-ending discussion among people. Scientists have fought for many years about the reasons and theories on how the dinosaurs disappeared. Some of the reasons for the extinction of the dinosaurs are that they died in a meteorite impact, small mammals ate their eggs, a world-wide flood wiped them out. They could not cope with their environment, and they might have had slipped disks. There have been at least 55 theories that have been suggested and thrown out because of problems. Whenever a scientist comes up with a theory, he must be able to prove or explain how it happened. A theory that works for large animals usually does not work for the small animals or sea creatures. Scientists agree that whatever happened to the dinosaurs must have affected the whole world. When the birth rate fails to keep up with the death rate, we get extinction.

Paleontologists divide extinction into two types: background extinction and mass extenuation. Background extinction is when isolated species disappear due to a variety of causes such as out competition, climate change, and depletion of their resources. Mass extinction is when large numbers of spices go extinct, when many types of spices go extinct, it effects the entire earth, and it all happened in a short time. Some scientists think the dinosaurs disappeared about 65 million years ago in the Cretaceous period. Biblical records show that the earth is about 5,000 years old. The timeline of how old people think the earth is and how old the Bible says it is are different. The latest theory suggests that the dinosaurs were killed by a meteorite impact, a collision like that would throw enough dust into the air to block out the sun and cause the temperature...