恐龍會滅絕的真正原因？鯊魚將瀕臨絕種？第六次大滅絕來了？復活猛瑪象的人沒看過《侏羅紀公園》嗎？古生物學家揭開生物滅絕的黑暗面紗！｜名人專業問答｜GQ Taiwan

I'm Dr. Kenneth Lacavara, paleontologist and executive director of the Edelman Fossil Park Museum of Rowan University. I'm here to answer your questions from the internet. This is Extinction [Music] Support. Lindseay Kinsel 2 asks, "How do we know an asteroid killed the dinosaurs? " Well, dinosaurs dominated Earth's terrestrial ecosystems for 165 million years. They were cosmopolitan. You find them on every continent. And then we see this impact layer, this ash, the fallout from the asteroid. And nowhere on Earth has anyone found a single implaced dinosaur fossil one centimeter above this layer. We can see that there was a day in history when poof, they were gone. Where is Brandon writes, "If asteroids killed the dinosaurs, how come every other animal that was alive at the same time as them that's still alive now survived? " The biggest killer that day when the asteroid struck was the heat. So if you were on the surface of the earth and had no place to hide, you died that day. If you could get underground like a little shrew-like mammal or a lizard or crocodiles or good burers or even birds, there were birds at the end of the Cretaceous period. If you could get under the ground that day, you had a chance at surviving. The real Lemming asks, "Where is the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs? Has it ever been found? " It has been found actually. And there's a crater off the Yucatan Peninsula. That's the east coast of Mexico. It's about 110 mi across and 12 mi deep. It was published in 1991. That's when scientists knew about it, but actually petroleum companies knew about it since the 70s. They didn't tell anyone cuz they're petroleum companies. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was about 18 km across traveling at about 45 times the speed of a bullet. And it probably landed in the springtime because there are some fish in North Dakota, some fossil fish that have spring pollen trapped in their gills. Sunpe taru asks a good question. Which animal species came the closest to going extinct and then successfully recovered?