Although theirs is perhaps the best - known mass extinction on Earth, by the author's account, the
dinosaurs» reign was a
massive success story — they thrived on the planet for more
than 150 million years, and their descendants are the more
than 10,000 species of birds that occupy almost every corner of the world today.
The controversy did provoke studies by geologists who would eventually show that the other great extinctions of the past, some even worse
than the doom of the
dinosaurs, had been caused by
massive injections of greenhouse gases from volcanic outbursts — an all too relevant demonstration of the power of the gases.