The extinction of dinosaurs has been founded to be mainly due to colossal bad luck as Stephen Brusatte states. Brussate is an evolutionary biologist and a verterbrate paleontologist from the University of Edinburgh. He led the international team in is study about the extinction of dinosaurs and the asteroid hit as published in Biological Reviews’ latest issue.
As stated from his interview with the Discovery news, he said that the asteroid almost did it, wiping dinosaurs but it happened on a bad time when the dinosaurs’ ecosystem weakened due to diversity loss. He further said that the dinosaurs would have survived if the asteroid hits million years earlier than its actual timing, then the extinction would have not happened.
It was noted that years before the asteroid hit the Earth has been undergoing extreme changes in sea level and temperature, huge volcanic eruptions and many other interconnected changes. Mountain formation and other tectonic events even led to the large seaway disappearance that covered much of North America’s interior during the Cretaceous.
These changes led to the extinction of the plant-eating dinosaurs that leaves the ecosystem imbalanced. When this asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula 66 years ago, it hit a paradise-like static world where dinosaurs live and caused them to become extinct in nature as what Stephen Brusatte states further.
Richard Butler from the University of Birmingham’s School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, even reminds that many bird species have become extinct about 66 million years ago. So, Butler and Brussate both agrees that if no asteroid impact and other environmental changes have happened, dinosaurs would still survive up to the present time. Yet they have also pointed out that humans won’t be here on earth if dinosaurs have not perished or came into extinction.