Dinosaur Extinction Facts for Kids

21 Dinosaur Extinction Facts For Kids

1. A mass extinction event around 66 million years ago caused the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other animal species.
2. The mass extinction event that killed all the dinosaurs is known as the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event.
3. It is estimated that around 75% of all living species (dinosaurs, animals, and plants) went extinct after the Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event.
4. The end of the Mesozoic Era
5. The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event ended the Mesozoic Era and was the beginning of the Cenozoic Era.
6. The leading theory for what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs is a massive asteroid impact event.
7. A massive asteroid impact event is backed by two important pieces of evidence, a thin layer of sediment known as the K-Pg boundary and the Chicxulub crater.
8. The K-PG boundary is found all over the world and contains abnormally high levels of iridium, an element common in asteroids, but not in the Earth’s crust.
9. The Chicxulub crater is an asteroid crater underneath the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico that was created around 66 million years ago.
10. The dinosaur extinction theory of an asteroid impact was put forth in 1980 by Luis Alvarez, his son Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel.
11. Luis Alvarez and his team discovered the K-PG boundary in 1980 and theorized that it was created by an impact event.
12. Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield discovered the Chicxulub crater in the 1970s while looking for oil and in 1990 it was confirmed to be the source of the K-PG boundary.
13. The asteroid believed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was between 6 and 9 miles wide.
14. Scientists believed the asteroid impact was one billion times stronger than the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima ans Nagasaki combined.
15. The massive impact would have caused massive global cooling and blocked out the Sun, preventing plants from creating energy from photosynthesis.
16. Herbivores dinosaurs would have died out first without access to plants, followed by carnivores dinosaurs when the herbivorous they hunted died out.
17. There are many other alternate theories to what caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, some plausible, some already disproven.
18. An alternate theory to the extinction of the dinosaurs is the eruption of the Deccan Traps in India. The theory is that eruptions that occurred over two million years dumped soot and sulfuric aerosols into the atmosphere, causing global cooling and blocking out the Sun.
19. The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event completely changed the evolution of life on our planet.
20. The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event allowed mammals to evolved rapidly and become one of the dominate animal groups on Earth.
21. The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event ultimately paved the road for the evolution of humans and our entire civilization. Humans would have never evolved with the extinction of the dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Extinction Pictures

There is a saying that claims a picture is worth a thousand words. If that is true then the below images will help you with your research on the extinction of the dinoaurs. Below you will find three pictures related to the extinction of the dinosaurs. These pictures should give you a bettering understanding of the dinosaur extinction and what it may have looked like.

A picture of a meteor impact killing the dinosaurs.

A picture of dinosaurs watching a meteor impacting.

A picture of a volcano eruption and dinosaur extinction.