Dinousaurs never heard the grim details on evening news. Geologist and paleontologists have long observed that dinosaurs seem to have vanished abruptly from the geologic record of Earth's life. Marking the end of Cretaceous and Mesozoic time, this mass extinction may be called the Cretaceous Terminal Event. Named for the Yucatan town of Chicxulub, this crater provides strong direct evidence for the Alvarezes' impact-extinction hypothesis. Maybe it wasn't so simple.
Some paleontologists believe that dinosaurs began to die out long before the end.
Others, perhaps reluctant to invoke a special celestial cause, propose that massive volcanic eruptions in India's Deccan Traps may have caused this great extinction. Maybe so, but for now my money's on Chicxulub. Please see disclaimer .