Dino survival after impact.

[Alondro]

I was just reading a little article in my latest issue of Discover which brings up some rather strong evidence that some dinosaurs survived for at least a million years after the asteroid/comet/(Dr. Who-based Cyberman-hijacked antimatter drive ship impact).

Several paleoantologists have found fossils of dinosaurs which date to well after the impact.  They are all of the smaller types of dinosaurs, so as expected the mega-fauna did likely get completely obliterated.

That makes sense to me.  I'd always wondered why all the dinosaurs were apparently singled out by the impact while animals life frogs, birds, mammals, delicate insects, and so many other species made it through.  Instead, it looks like some hung on for a while and dwindled out, perhaps as mammals took hold and simply out-evolved them... or they got a super-virus... or it was aliens again  .

At any rate, it just goes to show that general knowledge of the long-passed eons of Earth still have a lot left to reveal.

[RJ]

Actually, I've always thought that was the case. It would seem impossible that every single dinosaur on the planet got wiped out within even a couple years while mammals survived.

I suddenly have the urge to research local mega-fauna. If I remember there was like a Godzilla-Kangaroo and a wombat the size of a small car.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

As I always understood it, it was the mega-fauna that failed to survive. Smaller dinosaurs evolved further into lizards and snakes and the like.

In the same way that proto-mammals evolved into monkeys, over the same stretch of time. And, one of these days, the monkeys will evolve into intelligent beings...

[Alondro]

No, lizards are in somewhat of a different ancestral line which branched off from the common ancestor.  Same with snakes.  Even the theory that birds evolved from surviving small dinosaurs has started to break down after the discoveries that animals already distinctly bird-like had existed well before the extinction event.

Simply put, too much emphasis has been focused on theories that relied on very little evidence.  Now new facts mean those theories must likely be discarded.  We still can be sure that the very lagre dinosaurs died very soon after the impact.  Even the survivors of species like Brontosaurus and T-rex wouldn't have lasted long in the ecological wasteland that followed the impact.  The giant herbivores would have starved, then the large predators would have followed.  It's the little ones, scavengers especially, that never made sense going extinct.  When all else dies, the anecdote goes, the scavengers survive because they are accustomed to living on the bare minimum. 

Crocodiles and turtles, animals that are far more sensitive to changes in climate, made it through.  So there is a real mystery why ALL classes of dinosaurs died out entirely.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

And here I thought the changes in climate, on a large scale, were what would have made the difference.

Although, thinking about it, there's no reason why turtles and crocodiles should survive and other things evolve into new species. Either both should change, or both should survive, no?

One of those big questions that we're not going to have a decent answer for for some time. :-/

[RJ]

And remember everyone, Velociraptors aren't the big scary things they had in Jurassic Park, they were actually about the size of a large chicken and they supposedly had feathers. 

They also lived in around the deserts of the Mongolia area, not in the middle of Montana.

[Azlan]

And remember everyone, Velociraptors aren't the big scary things they had in Jurassic Park, they were actually about the size of a large chicken and they supposedly had feathers. 

They also lived in around the deserts of the Mongolia area, not in the middle of Montana.

Yes, but it is less scary when a nearly bald mongolian chicken leaps at you...

[Brunhidden]

'raptor' was a bit of a slang term in a way, like saying pteradon- theres probably at least a dozen beasties that could use that same word.

'raptor' just means 'bird of prey' in a foreign language, for all i care you could call it a 'racefelg' (spelling bad) to say the same thing in Norwegian.

also, on the topic of whatever killed the dinosaurs.... people forget there was more then one ice age, is it possible to track the prevalence of mega-fauna and compare it to a time line of the ice ages? for the life of me i cannot remember if there was an ice age prior to the big dino drop, and the time of the ice age was purportedly ruled by a great number of mega-fauna that died out apperantly at random.

not the face NOT THE FACE!

[Darkmoon]

As I had stood to understand it, the crater cause something akin to nuclear winter, which, along with the Mega Fauna dying off, would have had the impact of taking out all but the most hardiest of cold-blooded creatures, especially outside of the warm, equatorial regions.

I may be wrong, since I haven't looked into this bit of trivia in a while, but that was how I learned it.

From there, considering how things work, it an be assumed that those dinos that did survive were likely evolved out later by mammals, or they were able to evolve into some kind of species that eventually became what we have now.

Doesn't seem like much of a mystery there.

As far as raptors go, a good book to read is Raptor Red.