Asteroid kick started dinosaur age, according to scientists writing in Science, vol 296, p1305, 17 May 2002. American geologists have studied rocks and fossils dated around the Triassic-Jurassic boundary (200 million years ago) and found a sudden extinction of many plant eating dinosaurs, an increase in the number of large theropod (meat eating) dinosaurs and a sudden change in the types of ferns. They also found an increase in the amount of iridium in the rocks. The scientists believe these findings indicate there was a mass extinction cause by an asteroid impact which enabled the more advanced theropod dinosaurs to evolve.
Editorial Comment: The demise of one group of dinosaurs may have enabled others to move into now vacant territory and increase in numbers, but it cannot make the dinosaurs that moved in. Extinction is often put forward as an evolutionary process with the excuse that it allows new creatures to evolve. However, allowing something to happen is not the same as doing it. One reason for the differences in dinosaurs and ferns in the Triassic and Jurassic rocks is often due to a basic flaw in the way the evolutionists use the geological column – they date the rocks by what fossils they contain. This can automatically put different dinosaurs in different time periods but it still doesn’t explain how they came to exist or die out. (Ref. asteroid, dinosaurs, extinction)