The Triassic-Jurassic Extinction

There are many theories explaining the extinction of the dinosaur. The Most probable theories are: a massive meteor hit the earth causing the extinction. B. A chain of volcano’s erupted and caused acid rain, shortage of sunlight and any other number of atmospheric problems that brought about the extinction of dinosaurs. C. Rapid Climate Change in a short period of time would have brought the dinosaurs to extinction because of an inability to evolve to the new environment. All these theories are possible but it is clear that it was a combination of all three theories working together that produced a worldwide extinction event.

Four and a half billion years ago, the debris and dust left from the formation of the sun coalesced to form our home planet. 3.5 billion years ago, the first living organisms appeared on Earth. About 230 million years ago, Dinosaurs diverged from their Archosaurs ancestors during the middle to late Triassic period. For 160 million years they have dominated our planet. They are dubbed the most successful species to have lived on Earth. However, 65 million years ago, the most recent mass extinction seemed to have caused all of them to die-off. What caused the demise of the dinosaurs and 60% of life on Earth at the time? How did it affect life on Earth afterwards? Are all of the Dinosaurs dead? Will this happen to humans in the near future?

Stephen Gould’s essay “Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and the Extinction of the Dinosaurs” completely agrees with Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb’s essay “Argument, Critical Thinking, and Rationality.” Gould’s essay deals with three theories for the extinction of the dinosaurs, two of which he argues are entirely invalid because they are not in accordance with the basic rules of argument laid out by Williams and Colomb in their essay. Gould also states that the third theory of dinosaur extinction, natural disaster, follows all the rules that Williams and Colomb espouse, and thus is a sound argument. Gould, Williams, and Colomb all state that the world has a problem with irrational arguments being shoved down people’s throats, and call for a

Nobody can really say what actually eliminated the species, although everyone has their very own idea. Asteroid impact, atmospheric changes (hot to cold), catastrophic eruptions and astronomical events (supernovas etc.). Some have ventured that early mammal inhabitation slowly “pushed” the dinosaurs to extinction. The most favored theory in the scientific field is that of the meteor impact. As always though, knowing when is part of discovering how and why.

There have been 5 mass extinctions in Earth’s existence. The names of these are (from most recent to least recent): Cretaceous–Paleogene, Triassic–Jurassic, Permian–Triassic, Late Devonian, and Ordovician–Silurian. The most well known mass extinction, Cretaceous-Paleogene, was theorized to have occurred through a massive comet or asteroid impact. A cold winter created by the impacting object forbid any plants and plankton to carry out photosynthesis. During this time, about three quarters of all life went extinct. This happened approximately 66 million years ago. Most life forms went extinct, with some ectothermic species and tetrapods weighing less than 25 pounds. Although everything seemed to look hopeless, adaptive radiation caused evolution

Another theory that some proposed as the cause of the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction is high levels of toxic compounds released from volcanic activity. Directly around volcanic activity in the rift zone, there perhaps would have been high levels of Fluorine and Chlorine, both of which could have directly poisoned organisms. These large ejections of Chlorine and Fluorine could have led to ozone depletion and acid rain (McHone 2003). However, due to the fact that high levels of either of these compounds would have caused extinction without prejudice, the actual role that toxic compounds played during the Triassic-Jurassic extinction is hard to predict and study (Hautmann 2012).

Just the fact that the Pope has ignored the warnings of Catholic presidential candidates and is trying to fight climate change is monumental. Global warming is a global issue. No matter what religion or ethnicity global warming will affect everyone. Earth is the only known planet capable of supporting life. How embarrassing will it be for our generation if we wipe out life because of our ignorance. Earth has a marvelous ability to rebuild and return to a healthy state. After each of the five mass extinction events Earth was resilient enough to survive and so did life. After the most notorious, the Permian Mass Extinction, less than 4% of life survived. Miraculously Earth rebuilt its ecosystems and was able to sustain life. The causes of the

Fusulinid foraminifera disappeared completely, although other foram groups suffered much lower levels of extinction. Palaeozoic corals (Rugosa and Tabulata) also vanished. Stenolaemate bryozoans and articulate brachiopods suffered near-complete extinction. The extant echinoderm groups all experienced severe bottlenecks at this time: only two lineages of crinoids and echinoids made it into the Mesozoic. Several echinoderm groups (e.g. Blastoidea) suffered complete extinction.

The Cretaceous mass extinction is the most well-known case of meteorite impact on the earth, but it certainly is not the only one. It is merely the most well-known. Due to the impact, debris entered earth's atmosphere and caused the plant life of the time to die off due to the lack of sunlight to survive. This made food much more scarce for the species that were dominant at the time. The competition was simply too much for them, and as the plant life died out, so did the herbivores and then the carnivores died out as well. Not only the land was impacted, however, the sea life was affected heavily by this impact as well. The lack of sunlight caused the oceans to become colder, causing the habitats of many marine animals to be drastically altered

The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction or K-T extinction, which marks the Late Cretaceous, is a massive and large-scale extinction of animal and plant species that occurred over a short period of time 66 million years ago.

Triassic Period, The Triassic period was the first-time period of the Mesozoic era. This period occurred between 251 to 199 Million years ago. This was the period of diversification of the earth's ecology especially the marine creatures. Triassic Period is often known as the age of reptiles because there were a group of animals and plants that were extinct the Permian Extinction: One called the Therapsids, which were mammal-like reptiles, spiders, millipedes, scorpion, and centipedes but there was a new insect group of the Triassic period was the grasshoppers. Mosses and fern survived in the coastal regions you could find Lycopodiopsid, Puzzlegrass, Conifers, Cycad plants. Geologists said this period began and end when the large extinction

With all of the speculation over CO2 some people have been overlooking methane. “In 2006, the scientists who monitor methane, a greenhouse gas about 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide, thought that concentrations of the gas, which had sharply risen in the 1980s, had plateaued.” (Ogburn, Stephanie Paige) “Since then, researchers have seen a “sudden growth” of about 6 parts per billion per year, noted in the journal Science, that has pushed methane levels in the atmosphere to the highest they’ve ever been.” (Koebler, Jason) Could methane, the same chemical that heats your home, strike a second time? The Permian Mass Extinction was about 248 million years ago and the most recent mass extinction, K/T, was 65 million years ago. Will the rising

The age of the planet Earth is estimated to be about four point six billion years old. Life on Earth is estimated to have started one billion years later. Evolution has taken place since then. Evolving life from simple forms into more complex forms through the course of time. It all began with single celled organisms, prokaryotes. Later evolving in a period of two hundred million years, cyanobacteria began to produce photosynthesis. And life went on, evolving, adapting to its home. However through this course of time, mass extinctions have taken place on planet Earth. One of the most recent mass extinctions, has as a matter of fact left various amounts of evidence of the creatures which roamed the Earth at that time. Such magnificent creatures which varied from a very small size to giant sizes. Creatures which are now known to humanity as dinosaurs. The name of this extinction was the Cretaceous-Tertiary Mass Extinction. This extinction took place roughly sixty five million years ago. It has not been too long since this incident compared to the life span of the Earth. And yet it is still unclear how this extinction occurred. Paleontologists to this day, debate on how this extinction occurred. A major factor on what caused this extinction to occur was an impact of an asteroid. Another theory such as sea level regression is considered to be the blame for the extinction. Sea level regression is the drop of sea levels which aids to explain the marine mass extinction, however

Nobody knows for sure exactly how the dinosaurs became extinct. However scientists have speculated for decades about possible events that caused the dinosaurs to die out. Possibilities range from asteroids, to volcanoes, to climate changes. One of the more popular or well-known extinction theories involves the belief that an asteroid struck the Earth, causing devastating effects, and triggering mass extinctions around the end of the Cretaceous period.

They say as mammals continued to evolve, they drove the dinosaurs into extinction (“What Killed the Dinosaurs”). “Not only did mammals likely compete with dinosaurs for resources, many species survived the end-Cretaceous extinction and subsequently came to dominate Earth.” (“What Killed the Dinosaurs?”). This is primarily because the early mammals were a lot smaller than the mammals that exist today. “Some of the world's earliest mammals were the multituberculates, a group of small rodent like animals that first emerged on Earth about 165 million years ago.” (Welsh, Jennifer). Scientists predict that any mass extinction event that caused animals to go extinct affected larger animals than it did the smaller animals, such as mammals ("Dinosaurs Became Extinct 'due to Laying Eggs'"). Mammals remained small for almost 100 million years, while they out competed small and baby dinosaurs for food, shelter and resources until they were extinct. Once the dinosaurs were out of the way mammals were able to evolve and grow large in size like the mammals that exist today today (LiveScience). Fossil evidence sheds some light on this theory as well. Fossils of mammals believed to date back to about eighty five million years ago show that mammals began to change rapidly and grow. “This matches up with other mammal groups, including recently discovered species from the Late Cretaceous (between 100 million and 65 million years ago) showing highly specialized