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Disease and More
When dinosaurs ruled Earth, shallow seas covered much of the world's continental lowlands. The seas were filled with life: fish, seaweed, and swimming dinosaurs. At the end of the Cretaceous, shallow seas all over the world dried up, leaving deserts and sand dunes where once the plesiosaurs played.

In this alternate explanation of the dinosaurs' disappearance, they faded out slowly and gradually, not suddenly. Disease played an important role, but it was not the only factor. As you probably know, many different kinds of dinosaurs had disappeared by the end of the Cretaceous. Dinosaurs that had lived on the land, in the sea, and in the air were now gone. But many other kinds of life disappeared at the same time, including shellfish, corals, fish, flowering land plants, and even single-celled plankton floating in the seas. Most diseases infect only a single species or a small group of closely-related species of plant or animal. It is hard to think of a disease that would have affected all different kinds of dinosaurs. It is nearly impossible to imagine a disease that would have infected life forms as different as a T-Rex and a seaweed!

So, how could disease cause the extinction of the dinosaurs?

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Dinosaurs and Disease
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Did Dinosaurs Ever Get Sick?
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Dinosaurs and Disease | Disease and More | Did Dinosaurs Ever Get Sick? | Looking at Life Today | Changing Landscapes | Going Going Gone

Giant Impact | Super Nova | Disease | Volcanoes | Orbital Changes | Meet the Dinosaurs | Into the Future

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