Just read dino article. Is it possible that make up of air they breathed changed and that led to extinction?

Maybe their air was more carbon based, when the ice caps began to melt more oxygen was released. Or maybe their air at that point was completely different than ours. When the shift to our oxygen began they slowly and painfully began to choke and suffocate. Just looking for some possibilies.Just read dino article. Is it possible that make up of air they breathed changed and that led to extinction?
Air dissolves readily in water vapor, and water vapor freezes readily (trapping that air in ice) at the poles. When you push a steel cylinder into the ice-cap at the North pole, twist it, wnd pull it back out, you get an ';ice core'; that is made up of layers of ice that stretch back through time, which can be seperated, analysed, and tell you exactly what the composition of the air was just there back through time, too!





That's how scientists know just what the atmosphere was like at many points back through time. The particulates trapped in the layers also offer a history of volcanic eruptions that were big enough to spew dust into the stmosphere.





You might find this interesting:Just read dino article. Is it possible that make up of air they breathed changed and that led to extinction?
Can't suffocate by increasing the oxygen content. Astronauts can breathe pure oxygen or a variety of mixtures. In fact the Americans used a different air mixture than the Soviets. Report Abuse

The article was interesting. If I recall correctly, they are hypothesizing that dinosaurs, unlike other reptilians, may have evolved to be warm-blooded, which is why they succumbed and the contemporary crocodilians did not. They also may have been poisoned. They lifestyles and diets did differ.
I dont know.. Ice caps are melting right now like crazy, and I dont see any of us struggling to breath. I like the big meteor theory best.
It is very possible there was a huge volcanic explosion (larger than St. Helen out west USA) which caused so much ash in the atmosphere for months or years before it settled out. It's effect would have blocked the sun's rays and destroying all vegetation, wiping out the dinosaur's food supply, thus causing death of the species.
Plenty of animals that existed alongside dinosaurs, from crocodiles to cockroaches, still exist on earth today and have no trouble breathing the air.


If you want to argue that ';the make up of the air changed,'; you would need to explain why all those animals still thrive today.





And there were no ice caps when dinosaurs lived! The planet was too hot. For example, the rock record shows that the planet's sea level during the Cretaceous was about 100 meters higher than it is today. In fact, there was probably no ice on the whole planet.





And you should also remember that we can only know as much as we have evidence for. If something happened to the dinosaurs that left no evidence in the rocks for us to see, then as far as we can tell it never happened.
Interesting theory that might have been right except for the fact that all evidence proves otherwise.


1. There has been no evidence of a change in O2 concentration in the last several hundred million years.


2. The dinosaurs would have shown some signs of attempts to adapt because O2 concentration cannot change drastically.


3. The suddeness of their disappearance suggest a cataclysmic event.


4. The levels of Thorium found 65 million years ago suggest a meteor strike.


5. The air 100 million years ago had less CO2 than it does now.

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