• Question: Why are there mices in planet earth and how did the dinosaurs die??

    Asked by emmagrace to Dalya, Derek, Sarah, Tim, Tom on 22 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Tim Millar

      Tim Millar answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      Mice are around because they are decended from other mammals and the dinosaurs died out probably due to rapid climate change and habitat loss brough on by a meteorite inpact around 65million years ago.

    • Photo: Sarah Thomas

      Sarah Thomas answered on 20 Jun 2011:

      There are fossils of mice-like organisms that date back 65 million years! I’m not sure how they evolved but I guess the key to their survival all this time is that their diets are so flexible: they can eat seeds, nuts, plants, and meat.

      There are lots of theories about why the dinosaurs became extinct, but the most common one is the idea that something happened that made the climate change dramatically. There is geological evidence that suggests that around about 65 million years ago, the temperature dropped sharply and the sea levels fell. This would have affected the dinosaurs food supply.

      But there are other theories that disease, volcanic activity or radiation could have killed them, or perhaps it was a string of bad luck and several factors were involved! Who knows?!

    • Photo: Derek McKay-Bukowski

      Derek McKay-Bukowski answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Mice are obviously successful from an evolutionary path point-of-view and dinosaurs not.

      Sometimes animals, plants or ideas can die out because of climate variation or disease, as the others have said.

    • Photo: Tom Crick

      Tom Crick answered on 22 Jun 2011:

      Further to the previous answers:

      Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on. In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth.

      As such, they are the most intelligent life form on this planet; the whole business with the cheese and the squeaking is just a front.

      (this may not be true)

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