Day 30

Smith is mad about dinosaurs.  Mad, bonkers, barmy. He doesn't know his alphabet yet but he knows which dinosaurs are plant eaters and which are meat eaters, He knows each dinosaur by name and he has perfected the different dinosaur noises and a great dinosaur gait.  He has a future as a paelentologist surely.

But he stumped me the other day.  We were talking, as we do often, about how the dinosaurs all died when the giant meterorite hit the Earth.  I bleeted on about how the plants all died so the plant eating dinosaurs had nothing to eat, so they died, and that after the meat eating dinosaurs had eaten all the dead plant eating dinosaurs, then they died too.  "But what about the plesiosaurs Mum?  Why did they die?"  "Well because the dust cloud covered the sun and...no...that wouldn't have affected them, umm. because...umm...not sure buddy, I'll look into it for you...".

So here we are....how did plesiosaurs become extinct?

The devastation caused by the giant meterorite that hit Mexico also destroyed ecological systems all over the earth, including those in the seas.  Also this was a period of massive volcanic activity. and this series of massive eruptions around 60-65 million years ago, and may have contributed to the mass extinction event. Volcanic eruptions produce large amounts of toxic gasses, and these can also have a devastating effect on living organisms.
It is likely that both these event contributed to the wide-scale destruction of habitats both on land and in the water.
Geez, why can't "they just died ok?" not be an answer.  He's only 4.
And that dinosaur box in the photo is absolutely chocker block full of dinosaurs.