Were dinosaurs killed off by a meteorite?

I am a hobbyist rather than an expert on dinosaurs. Anyone who knows more than me on this topic feel free to step in.

My understanding is that the Meteors and the climate change that followed favored smaller animals. The giant lizards, who need huge food supplies, died off. The smaller animals which included early mammals and the ancestors of modern birds survived and thrived.

Birds and Dinosaurs split from a common ancestor long before the KT extinction 65million years ago.

Google Dromaeosaur for more info.
Bird Origins

maxdancona's answer is excellent.

The dust kicked up by the impact of a large meteor (and possibly a swarm of meteors, since there are other impact craters dating from about the same time), would have greatly cooled the Earth, making it uncomfortable, if not deadly for some species. This would also have made it impossible for some plant species to have continued, thus cutting down the food supply of the larger herbivores. When the larger herbivores died off, the larger carnivores didn't have an abundant food supply.

Birds and dinosaurs certainly seem to be related. And dinosaurs may have even been feathered. There is at least some indication that they were warm-blooded, rather than cold-blooded like reptiles.

There is some evidence that Dinosaurs were in rapid decline long before the meteor struck, so that impact may have just been the coup de grace rather than the root cause of their decline. Flowering plants had just recently appeared, so the vegetation was changing, and the volcanic eruptions of the Deccan Traps also occurred at that time, so there are numerous possibilities. It may not have been one single cause.

That's certainly possible. (I wasn't there, so I can't rightly know!)

And then, what caused the Deccan Traps eruptions? Could they have been stimulated by meteoric impacts which were later covered by the lava flows? So, meteor impacts could've been behind even the Traps. But, of course, the opposite cannot be said, though that is a funny idea (Mother Earth saying to the universe-at-large, "hit me with your best shot," in her best Pat Benatar imitation).

Flowering plants? Thanks for that. I didn't know. Gee, I love learning new things. But I don't think meteors had anything to do with flowers.

One day, we may find that flower pollen weakened the dinosaur immune system. So, a little "heavy rain" from meteors merely gave them a cold from which they couldn't recover. Ouch!

The "Grasses" are all flowering plants, none of them existed before a certain time and as they evolved and spread they changed the base of the food chain over the planet. They displaced other types of plants and created whole new ecosystems (grasslands). Dinosaurs might have adapted, or they might have been having trouble, it's hard to know.

And the Deccan Traps may have been formed as a result of the KT impact. They happened with suspicious simultaneity on almost exactly the opposite side of the planet (convergent shockwave).

rosbornes answer is spot on. Birds appeared in the Jurassic and were already evolving away when the exdtinction of dinosaurs occured.
Dinosaurs were in severe decline in the Cretaceous anyway
According to Dave Raup

1Dinosaurs were a dumb idea

2They lasted quite long enough

Brilliant analysis from a brilliant paleoecologist.

If we look at how all the landmasses were installed within PAngea and how the breakup of Pangea spread from the paranha plume at (130 mya) through the Deccan plume (64my), the "convergent shockwave" hypothesis has been downplayed mostly for lack of evidence and the fact that pangeas breakup is very well documented by volcanic arc locations.
The convergent shockwave idea was the work of one guy back in the earl 90's. It looked at least "reasonable" but was never well evidenced or even half evidenced.
Iwas a big fan until Santosh and Rogers work about the geohistory of contimemtal drift and supercontinental landmasses.

Oh well. It sounded good at the time.

Theres actually two scientists who claim that there were several genera of dinos that "made it through" the Chixclub event.

You guys constantly ignore the irrefutable evidence i have presented time and again . . .



You can read my report at http://www.wretchedfossil.BSblog.icantbelieveyouactuallytriedthislink.com

Weve considered the "Smoking hypothesis" at great length at several symposia. I dont recall much of what happened after that but I did wake up in a strange ladies room.

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AND, Im gonna get you when you leats expect it. I pushed your "wretched fossil"ink without reading the title , a course. CUTE!

However, it did lead me to a seris of links of guys within 50 miles who are selling fossils

Birds being one I guess. What is the other?

no actual dinos. Im not sure of the genera. Ill look it up when I next get up to Princeton.

The meteor is the visible trail of the meteoroid, If the meteoroid does not burn up completely, and actually reaches the Earth it is a meteorite.

It's probably the Tuatara or something like that.

Does that mean you woke up in the room of a strange lady, or in a ladies room which you found strange? (How was it strange, urinals next to the sanitary napkin dispenser?)

no, These were actuak dinosaurs, Actually some species of the saurichian clans, maybe a widespread group of duckbills or something of those genera.
The newer hypotheses involve a series of events that were en echelon around the planet and included climate zonation due to free ocean currents causing desertified areas; migrations of continental landmasses to the higher soutern latitudes, the fact that there may have actualy been 2 bolides; vulcanism, specifically the Paranha and the Deccan basalt traps changing local climates, and the awakening of the proto "ring of fire". There was lotsa tectonics going on and, besides the unrelated bolide, these tectonics were all related to Pangea going to pieces

When I reread this it made it sound like I said that there werent any dinos. BAd punctruation leads to bad conclusions