If an Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs how did Evolution continue?

[Oliver1990]

If an Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs how did Evolution continue?

I think I'm missing something out as I'm pretty new to reading about Evolution in detail. I've watched a few programs and books and this is how its usually depicted:

Evolution started from Bacteria.
Bacteria -> Fish -> Amphibians etc...
Asteroid happens killing the Dinosaurs.
Amphibians continue to Evolve.

So my question is, if the Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs, wouldn't it of wiped out the Amphibians and everything else too?

I realise there are other theories such as Volcanos & Ice Aces but wouldn't this have the same effect too?

I know the majority of Scientists believe it was an Asteroid, but I just struggle to figure out how Evolution continued to happen if everything was wiped out?

I'm probably missing something stupid but any enlightenment would be great.

Thanks!

[popeyespappy]

Everything didn't get wiped out.

[CapnAwesome]

Well the dinosaurs actually went extinct over a long period of time after the asteroid impact. It's not like it killed them right away, rather climate change triggered by the asteroid is what killed them. Mammals and other smaller animals were better able to survive in the new environment and that's what eventually evolved into us and all the modern mammals. Mammals have been around for quite a bit. It's all very interesting and the fact that you are looking into it is very good. I don't think your question is a stupid one, just one of an inquiring mind. I'd say keep researching and have fun.

There is a good Nova series that you can find on evolution that answers a lot of questions like the ones you have. I'd highly recommend it. It's easy to find online.

[Angrboda]

And it's also not true that descendants from the dinosaurs are all extinct, nor that all animals in that clade are extinct. Birds are descended from dinosaurs, and there are many species that are closely related to the dinosaurs who did not die out. A more important effect to look at is how the supposed asteroid impact affected the ecosystem as a whole. While it affected the dinosaurs, it's most significant impact would have been on the plant life of the time, as plants are broadly speaking, sensitive to the parameters which would have been changed by the impact, and can't change their habits or evolve adaptations to the new conditions as readily. I'm not overly knowledgeable about the subject, but it may have been a combination of factors in that both the change in the environment, as well as an inability of the species in that clade to adapt, resulted in the demise of the dinosaurs, in addition to the often overlooked fact that the success of other species can destructively impact the success of competitors. In the ecosystems that resulted from the impact, because the energy from the sun was reduced, the energy available in derivative form in the way of plant material became less available. (The introduction of foreign species into habitats that they are uniquely suited to exploit is a similar phenomena in that the mammals and such would have suddenly become uniquely suited to the changed environment, and the dinosaurs less so; there's a limit to what the resources of an ecosystem can support, and what's a gain for the mammals and other surviving clades, becomes a loss for the dinosaurs.) What might have been an evolutionarily justified adaptation in times of plenty might well become an expensive albatross in times of scarce resources. (There are significant epochs with relation to the evolutionary history of plant life, but I don't know enough about them. http://www.talkorigins.org/ is also a good place to learn about evolution, though it may not be sufficiently basic or topically satisfactory for you.)

(I'll have to watch that video myself.)

[Anomalocaris]

If an Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs how did Evolution continue?

I think I'm missing something out as I'm pretty new to reading about Evolution in detail. I've watched a few programs and books and this is how its usually depicted:

Evolution started from Bacteria.
Bacteria -> Fish -> Amphibians etc...
Asteroid happens killing the Dinosaurs.
Amphibians continue to Evolve.

So my question is, if the Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs, wouldn't it of wiped out the Amphibians and everything else too?

I realise there are other theories such as Volcanos & Ice Aces but wouldn't this have the same effect too?

I know the majority of Scientists believe it was an Asteroid, but I just struggle to figure out how Evolution continued to happen if everything was wiped out?

I'm probably missing something stupid but any enlightenment would be great.

Thanks!

Evolution can happen because different species, and different individuals within a specie, have different degree of fitness when faced with the same survival challenges. If that were not the case, there would be no evolution.

It so happens that land dwelling dinosaurs were unfit to survive the conditions that prevailed around the time of chicxulub asteroid impact. A minority of flying dinosaurs (known as birds) was fit to survive it. This is why we raise parrots but do not run from modern day velociraptors, even though the ancestors of the parrots were close relatives of velociraptors.

As it happens, large fraction of species of mammals and amphibians that lived in the shadow of dinosaurs were also unfit to survive the same impact. Only feaction of the species of these two groups could match the flying dinosaurs and survive. That's why the typical mammals and amphibians living today don't much resemble the collection of mammal and amphibians alive when tyrannosaurs were around.

Is this clear? Major calamities like giant vulcanos, asteriods, and republicans wipe out a large number of species. But the species that die out tend to have some common property that makes them particularly vulnerable to the specific calamity in question. Animals that survive would be ones who lack the fatal property.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

To add on to Chuck's post:

After so many species die out, it's also a lot easier for the surviving ones to survive as their competition and predators are all gone. So even though very small amount survive, they procreate and are able to fill the niches that the dead animals left behind. So rapid (in evolutionary time frames) speciation would happen.

[Minimalist]

wouldn't it of wiped out the Amphibians and everything else too?

No.

[NoahsFarce]

So my question is, if the Asteroid wiped out the Dinosaurs, wouldn't it of wiped out the Amphibians and everything else too?

"Have" is the word you are looking for here, not "of."

Sorry, that's all I got. Everyone else already covered the bases. I know, I'm a jerk.

[Rahul]

The whole thing is ecological niches. If one animal already dominates a certain ecological niche but then they die for whatever reason, they go extinct so to say, it's a big opportunity for other species to exploit that resource. So when a combination of things, the most traumatic, but not the only reason, being the meteor strike that killed off a lot of critters, us mammals had free reign to exploit those niches. So we diversified and became the dominate type of animal on Earth.

The dinosaur extinction wasn't the most severe extinction on Earth. We've had 5 major extinction events that we know of on Earth. A lot of specialists consider human expansion and the resulting excelerated species extinction caused by us to be the the sixth major extinction event.

[Cato]

I think I'm missing something out as I'm pretty new to reading about Evolution in detail.

Allow me. Here's the link to Gutenberg.org's page for a bloke named Charles Darwin, it's a good place to start.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/485