Volcanoes Helped Doom Dinos

How a single horn could cement a theory

(NEWSER) - It’s just one horn, not quite a foot and a half long, but scientists say a newly discovered fossil could clinch the theory that a falling asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs. Skeptics of the scenario have always pointed out that we’ve found no dinosaur fossils dated within the 3 million years before the meteor hit, the Telegraph explains. Until now, that is. More»

Study: There were many meteor strikes, not one

(NEWSER) - Some scientists believe a single meteor strike in the Gulf of Mexico doomed the dinosaurs, but new research suggests that the dinosaurs may have been wiped out by a meteor shower that lasted thousands of years, finds the Telegraph . A recent study of a crater in Ukraine, which dates much, much earlier, suggests the Mexico hit was part of a longer "shower." More»

The lava all but wiped out main competitors

(NEWSER) - An explosion of volcanic activity 200 million years ago may have been responsible for the mass extinction that left dinosaurs with few competitors and allowed them to dominate the Earth for almost 150 million years. Researchers have discovered evidence of massive lava flows concurrent with elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. They surmise that the world was subject to “super” global warming. More»

One-way breathing pattern points to common ancestor

(NEWSER) - In the midst of the planet's worst-ever wave of extinction some 250 million years ago, the ancestors of birds and alligators managed to survive thanks to a shared breathing mechanism that enabled them to weather low oxygen levels. New research shows that when birds and alligators breathe, air flows in one direction rather than in and out of chambers—an efficient way of breathing that would have come in handy in the late Triassic period when oxygen was in short supply, BBC reports. More»

(NEWSER) - A meteor strikes Earth, dust clouds block the sun, and shivering dinosaurs die off in the cold—right? Not so, say researchers who have dug up dinosaur fossils well above the Arctic Circle in Russia. Because the find includes fossilized dino eggshells, they say, dinosaurs settled up there and withstood freezing temperatures. A meteor still may have killed them, though, by curbing the food chain and forcing mass starvation. More»