what caused the dinosaurs to go extinct

The extinction of the dinosaurs is one of the most dramatic mass extinctions Earth has ever seen. The exact nature of the catastrophic event that caused their extinction is still open to scientific debate, but evidence suggests that an asteroid impact was the main culprit. The asteroid impact threw huge amounts of debris into the air and caused massive tidal waves to wash over parts of the American continents. The impact also caused substantial fires, which would have had a significant impact on the environment. Volcanic eruptions that caused large-scale climate change may also have been involved, together with more gradual changes to Earths climate that happened over millions of years. Whatever the causes, the huge extinction that ended the age of the dinosaur left gaps in ecosystems around the world, which were subsequently filled by the only dinosaurs to survive - birds - and mammals, both of which went on to evolve rapidly.