What caused the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction?

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, or the K-T event, is the name given to the die-off of the dinosaurs and other species that took place some 65.5 million years ago. This suggests that a comet, asteroid or meteor impact event may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

How large was the object that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?

The impact site, known as the Chicxulub crater, is centred on the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The asteroid is thought to have been between 10 and 15 kilometres wide, but the velocity of its collision caused the creation of a much larger crater, 150 kilometres in diameter – the second-largest crater on the planet.

What happened during the Cretaceous extinction?

Best known for killing off the dinosaurs, the end-Cretaceous mass extinction also caused many other casualties. Ammonoids (marine mollusks), pterosaurs (gliding reptiles), mosasaurs (swimming reptiles), and a host of other plants and animals died out completely or suffered heavy losses.

What happened during the Cretaceous Paleogene extinction?

K–T extinction, abbreviation of Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction, also called K–Pg extinction or Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction, a global extinction event responsible for eliminating approximately 80 percent of all species of animals at or very close to the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, about 66 …

What was Earth’s climate during the Cretaceous Period?

The Cretaceous was a period with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high eustatic sea levels that created numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites, and rudists, while dinosaurs continued to dominate on land.

How an asteroid impact caused extinction?

Debris from the explosion was thrown into the atmosphere, severely altering the climate, and leading to the extinction of roughly 3/4 of species that existed at that time, including the dinosaurs. Many asteroids of this type are now known; their orbits pass through the inner solar system and cross Earth’s orbit.

How did the Cretaceous mass extinction affect life on Earth?

More than 99 percent of all organisms that have ever lived on Earth are extinct. The most studied mass extinction, which marked the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods about 66 million years ago, killed off the nonavian dinosaurs and made room for mammals and birds to rapidly diversify and evolve.

What happened during the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event?

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction, was a sudden mass extinction of some three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth, approximately 66 million years ago.

What is the most recent mass extinction on Earth?

Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction – 66 million years ago The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event is the most recent mass extinction and the only one definitively connected to a major asteroid impact. Some 76 percent of all species on the planet, including all nonavian dinosaurs, went extinct. 3:32

What animals survived the mass extinction of the dinosaurs?

Omnivores, insectivores, and carrion -eaters survived the extinction event, perhaps because of the increased availability of their food sources. No purely herbivorous or carnivorous mammals seem to have survived. Rather, the surviving mammals and birds fed on insects, worms, and snails, which in turn fed on detritus (dead plant and animal matter).

What are the factors that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs?

Other causal or contributing factors to the extinction may have been the Deccan Traps and other volcanic eruptions, climate change, and sea level change.