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Name: Anna
Status: student
Age:  18
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 2000-2001
Question:
What is the theory behind, the dinosaurs dying due to climatic changes?

Replies:
Anna,

Aside from the intolerance of a hot-climate dinosaur having to face a rapidly cooling climate (one of the main theories of dinosaur extinction), the cooler climate would also cause the plants to dwindle that vegetarian dinosaurs would eat, thereby leaving no vegetarian dinosaurs for the flesh-eating dinosaurs to eat.

One of the theories is that a rapidly cooling climate could have been caused by a massive collision of a meteor or comet with the Earth, as seems to have occurred long ago in at least two locations, Central America and in northwestern Iowa, where very large craters have been found. There may be other very large impact craters on Earth that have not been discovered yet. These may have been made at about the same time or at very different times (which could explain the multiple extinctions that are theorized.

David Cook
Argonne National Laboratory

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