I do attribute a lot to environmental changes, but not to some meteor. For example, why should a meteor have caused the extinction of theatosaurus and not the alligator. That is one flaw with your theory just off the top my my head. It still fails to explain everything. And there is no real evidence that a meteor struck in the first place. Central America does curve a bit, but that does not make it a crater, and if it were a crater then it's the most irregular and unusual shaped crater that I have ever seen.
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"For example, why should a meteor have caused the extinction of theatosaurus and not the alligator."
Central America does curve a bit, but that does not make it a crater, and if it were a crater then it's the most irregular and unusual shaped crater that I have ever seen.
That's because it's not a crater ;)
The crater does exist in the Yukatan peninsula, but largely as a magnetic anomaly, so it's not something you could easily observe anymore (after all, 65 million years is a long time even from a geological viewpoint).
image
It still fails to explain everything.
At least it's more reliable than a 5000 to 2000-year-old goat herder book.
"And there is no real evidence that a meteor struck in the first place."
Iridium motherfucker, have you heard of it?
Fine then how do you explain the extinction of more than 90% of the species on earth 65 million years ago?
The Chicxulub crater has had 65 million years to weather and is also just too large to be distinguished with just human eyesight. However there is no doubt at all that the crater is there. But of course you don't want it to be real so instead of attempting to look it up you'll just keep denying it.
"It still fails to explain everything."
So, because we don't know everything we can't know anything? You're skating very close to the edge of epistemological nihilism there, sunny Jim.
"And there is no real evidence that a meteor struck in the first place."
There is *lots* of evidence you just choose to dismiss it because it doesn't agree with your petty world view. Not my problem, you're welcome to wallow in your ignorance.
If it was a very large meteor there is no way it is not going to have some sort of effect. The environmental changes from such an event are not going to be consistent across all species, or even all species of the same class (reptile, in your example), unless you have an event that is so big it's completely fatal to everything.
Oh, here: "The largest air-breathing survivors of the event, crocodilians and champsosaurs, were semi-aquatic and had access to detritus. Modern crocodilians can live as scavengers and can survive for months without food, and their young are small, grow slowly, and feed largely on invertebrates and dead organisms or fragments of organisms for their first few years. These characteristics have been linked to crocodilian survival at the end of the Cretaceous.[9]" ([9] being: Sheehan Peter M, Hansen Thor A (1986). "Detritus feeding as a buffer to extinction at the end of the Cretaceous". Geology 14 (10): 868870.)
to be fair, iirc, there ARE some other theories about the dinosaur extinction (mind, I'm not disputing the fact that it hit, as that's pretty unarguable). The ones I recall off the top of my head include pandemic disease, super-volcano explosions, and (my personal favorite, even if I think it's almost impossible) gamma ray burst.
Mind, I doubt our friend jmsnooks has any of the above in mind...for him, it's just GODDIDIT!
You see there are these people called scientists, and they study stuff like craters. Plus, the alligator never existed back then, it was a relative like Deinosuchus or something.
I'm also creating a Paleontology Award. jmsnooks gets one automatically.
Sweet Lao - jm is pretty fundie. Try reading some of his other posts.
You know, I once thought the Gulf of Mexico was a crater too (at least, I think that's what he's referring to) - in 6th grade. Besides, anything that gargantuan would have completely obliterated all life, not just dinosaurs. No, it would have to be a lot smaller than that. Just use the common sense built into your mind.
Yes, we have limited theories backed by good reasoning and evidence.
Whereas "goddidit" explains Everything by explaining Nothing. Sorry buddy.
Confused?
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