Question about dinosaurs

[Moscow Mule]

armysniper72 has the best answer

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...5053829AAe6LTS

[dang65]

I also thought the only descendants of dinos were birds?

This is the thing. We're talking about such a gigantic period of time that what we think looks a bit like a dinosaur now (a crocodile or a komodo dragon) might have nothing to do with dinosaurs, and what we think doesn't look anything like a dinosaur (a sparrow or an owl) might be their direct descendants. Or not.

[expat]

Well, some say that the crocodiles etc. are the descendents of the dinosaurs which survived. It's just that the survivors had to compete with those little furry critters.

And although it might well have been a catastrophe that started the dinosauric decline, it still could have taken a few million years for them to finally all kick the bucket.

No, dinosaurs and reptiles were distinct, and in fact dinos were replacing some reptiles by the time they got what was coming. Also, many reptiles went in the same extinction, including all flying and marine reptiles. The survivors just got lucky.

[DimPrawn]

The survivors just got lucky.

Same as the IT market now.

New Labour is the extinction event.

[scooterscot]

How come something catastrophic killed off every single dinosaur (and there were lots of different types and sizes) but did not kill of crocodiles, aligators and large reptiles like the Komodo Dragon?

What enabled these large reptiles to survive but not a single dinosaur?

Don't ask me why I thought of this.

You need to visit the British museum DP.

Back then it was thought that the oxygen content of air was far greater than what it is today, allowing such massive creatures to evolve.

Most of this O2 was consumed because of some global event, leaving only the those creatures that required less O2 behind.

Essentially the dinosaurs suffocated.

[Ruprect]

You need to visit the British museum DP.

Back then it was thought that the oxygen content of air was far greater than what it is today, allowing such massive creatures to evolve.

Most of this O2 was consumed because of some global event, leaving only the those creatures that required less O2 behind.

Essentially the dinosaurs suffocated.

Were they all driving 4x4s?

[BoredBloke]

I'd heard that they survived because of 2 things.

1 - they will happily eat rotten or rotting meat
2 - once they have eaten they don't need to eat again for about a year

[expat]

Same as the IT market now.

New Labour is the extinction event.

New Labour is an Outside Context Problem (OCP) for IT Contracting, the kind of problem "most civilisations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."

"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."

[EternalOptimist]

The crocodiles, alligators and kimono dragons did actually become extinct at the same time as dinosaurs. They then re-evolved from dung beetles.

[FSM with Cheddar]

The crocodiles, alligators and kimono dragons did actually become extinct at the same time as dinosaurs. They then re-evolved from dung beetles.

Didn't dung beetles evolve from worm eating beetles?