What did Earth look like during dinosaurs?
During the time of the dinosaurs, which was roughly 230 to 65 million years ago, the Earth looked quite different than it does today. The continents were arranged differently, forming a supercontinent called Pangaea. The climate was warmer and more humid, and there were no polar ice caps.
Triassic Period (252 to 201 million years ago)
The Triassic climate was relatively hot and dry, and much of the land was covered with large deserts. Unlike today, there were no polar ice caps. These fossils come from a dinosaur called Nyasasaurus.
Mountains rose on the seafloor, pushing sea levels higher and onto the continents. All this water gave the previously hot and dry climate a humid and drippy subtropical feel. Dry deserts slowly took on a greener hue. Palm tree-like cycads were abundant, as were conifers such as araucaria and pines.
Minutes after the initial impact, red-hot debris began raining down, covering the ground with deadly ash and dirt. Around the impact zone, the ground was likely covered with hundreds of feet of rocky rubble. Less than an hour after impact, a horrific wind raced through the region, knocking down anything still standing.
Dinosaurs roamed the Earth in the Mesozoic Era, which is split into the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They first emerged during the Triassic period around 245 million years ago. At the time, all continents were part of a single land mass – the supercontinent Pangea.
God told Noah, “And of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort shalt thou bring into the ark, to keep them alive with thee; they shall be male and female” (Genesis 6:19). A few small dinosaurs would have been on the ark. The larger species of dinosaurs were probably young and smaller on the ark.
After the dinosaurs died out, nearly 65 million years passed before people appeared on Earth. However, small mammals (including shrew-sized primates) were alive at the time of the dinosaurs.
Evidence suggests an asteroid impact was the main culprit. Volcanic eruptions that caused large-scale climate change may also have been involved, together with more gradual changes to Earth's climate that happened over millions of years.
The average temperature of the Earth during the Jurassic period was around 16.5°C (61.7°F). This is warmer than the current average temperature, which is about 14°C (57.2°F).
Compared to dinosaurs, humans have occupied only a speck on the timeline of Earth's history. Modern humans appeared on the stage 200,000 years ago (up to 7 million years ago if you include the whole human family), while dinosaurs roamed the globe for about 165 million years.
What came before dinosaurs?
Before the dinosaurs, the dominant forms of life on land and sea were the synapsids — a group also known as “proto-mammals.” Learn about some of the strangest and most ferocious synapsids and how these unusual creatures evolved into mammals like us.
Around 75 percent of all existing plant and animal species vanished almost overnight, and our beloved dinosaurs were decimated. Of the dinosaurian herd, only beaked birds made it to modern times.
When a 6-mile (10 kilometers) asteroid slammed into the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago, causing the demise of the dinosaurs as part of the largest mass extinction event in the last 100 million years, it took life on the planet at least 30,000 years to bounce back.
Dinosaurs arose from small dinosauromorph ancestors in the Triassic period, when the climate was harsh and dry. They faced "competition from the croc-line archosaurs for tens of millions of years, [but] finally prevailed when Pangaea began to split," Brusatte told Live Science.
This era includes the Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous Periods, names that may be familiar to you. It ended with a massive meteorite impact that caused a mass extinction, wiping out the dinosaurs and up to 80% of life on Earth.
Paleontologists don't know for certain, but perhaps a large body size protected them from most predators, helped to regulate internal body temperature, or let them reach new sources of food (some probably browsed treetops, as giraffes do today).
Concerning the age of the Earth, the Bible's genealogical records combined with the Genesis 1 account of creation are used to estimate an age for the Earth and universe of about 6000 years, with a bit of uncertainty on the completeness of the genealogical records, allowing for a few thousand years more.
The other planets are individualized in the Bible only by implication. The worship of gods connected with them is denounced, but without any manifest intention of referring to the heavenly bodies.
Christians who believe in a 'young' earth may argue that either dinosaurs never existed, or that they lived here much more recently and fossil dating is unreliable. However, many Christians think the Bible does fit with a much older earth.
Human evolution is the lengthy process of change by which people originated from apelike ancestors. Scientific evidence shows that the physical and behavioral traits shared by all people originated from apelike ancestors and evolved over a period of approximately six million years.
When was the first human born?
The first human ancestors appeared between five million and seven million years ago, probably when some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs. They were flaking crude stone tools by 2.5 million years ago.
The first humans emerged in Africa around two million years ago, long before the modern humans known as hom*o sapiens appeared on the same continent. There's a lot anthropologists still don't know about how different groups of humans interacted and mated with each other over this long stretch of prehistory.
Sixty-six million years ago, dinosaurs had the ultimate bad day. With a devastating asteroid impact, a reign that had lasted 180 million years was abruptly ended. Prof Paul Barrett, a dinosaur researcher at the Museum, explains what is thought to have happened the day the dinosaurs died.
When non-avian dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, mammals persisted. But a new study shows that this group didn't go unchanged: in the first 10 million years following the mass extinction event, mammals bulked up, rather than evolving bigger brains, to adapt to the dramatic changes in the world around them.
It is believed that due to the combination of slow incubation and the considerable resources needed to reach adult size, the dinosaurs would have been at a distinct disadvantage compared to other animals that survived the asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago.
