How do scientists know that a meteorite killed the dinosaurs?
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They don’t. We have evidence of a giant asteroid strike in the Yucatan region of Mexico 65 million years ago that spread debris across the whole planet. Dinos vanished within 150 million( edit–150 thousand–sorry) years after. (A blink of an eye in geological records) Also, giant volcanos in Mongolia and Asia filled the air with ash around the same time period. It may have been a one-two punch that removed enough large dinos so that mammals could take over the new habitats made available. Most scientists agree the dust clouds from either event blocked out enough sun to remove most trees from the food chain and small seed storing mammals underground had the best chance of survival during the years after it took for the dirty air to let sunlight reach the ground. This is called nuclear winter.
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