History Main / PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs

[[folder:Film -- Live-Action]]

Why, none other than the extinction that wiped out the UsefulNotes/{{dinosaurs}}. Despite [[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8550504.stm being confirmed with a huge degree of certainty and consensus]] to be some kind of asteroid or comet impact, the debate has made the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction ideal due to the sheer number of theories flying about, making it a {{Stock Unsolved Myster|ies}}y to rival even WhoShotJFK What's one more [[EpilepticTree crazy theory]] going to hurt? Other works go along with the mainstream hypothesis, but say that their factor [[ColonyDrop caused the impactor to fall to earth]], or was the impactor itself.

A subtrope of HistoricalInJoke and RealEventFictionalCause. See TheDinosaursHadItComing when the dinosaurs' extinction is blamed on themselves. Compare ArtisticLicensePaleontology, which this trope can fall into if not done well. Contrast with LostWorld, where the dinosaurs manage to duck and cover in a cave/valley/jungle before the big event. See also TheCretaceousIsAlwaysDoomed, which is about the tendency of time-travelers to arrive at dates of historical significance -- ''especially'' the end of the dinosaurs -- by complete coincidence; that trope can overlap with this one if the reason they're present for the extinction is that they ''caused'' it.

* In the religious film ''Anime/TheLawsOfTheSun'', when dinosaurs prowled the Earth after he recreated the Venusians into human beings in there, he summoned immigrants from a warlike race, the Magellanic-Cloud People, to kill the dinosaurs so they won't interfere with the terrestrial group's mission.

* One ''ComicStrip/TheFarSide'' strip shows dinosaurs smoking cigarettes, with the caption "what really killed the dinosaurs."

* ''Fanfic/DayOfTheBarneyTrilogy'': [[Series/BarneyAndFriends Barney and Baby Bop]] summoned the meteor that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago by singing "I love you, you love me." Believe it or not, this isn't the most heinous deed on their HistoricalRapSheet.

Similarly fantastic theories have sometimes been suggested to explain why other species went extinct, though due to SmallReferencePools, most writers tend to ignore the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event Permian–Triassic extinction]] (aka [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "The Great Dying"]]), which was the biggest mass extinction ever and perhaps the closest Earth ever came to [[ApocalypseHow/Class6 life being wiped out entirely]]. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic-Jurassic_extinction_event Triassic–Jurassic extinction]], which was almost as widespread as the Cretaceous–Paleogene and directly led to dinosaurs becoming the dominant forms of life for the next 135 million years, is even more obscure. Apparently, it's only the fall of the dinosaurs, and not their rise to prominence, that's deemed interesting enough for fiction. Despite the fact that both of these events have considerably more uncertainty about their causes (and thus more room to invent a Phlebotinum-based explanation) than the by this point rather well-understood Cretaceous–Paleogene.

[[folder:Web Original]]

* "WesternAnimation/GormitiTheLordsOfNatureReturn" reveals that the Dinosaurs were wiped out because their equivalent species on the Gorm turned themselves invisible for a sufficiently long time, with the meteor being "what they want you to think". The same thing threatens to happen to the birds when a spell is cast that turns the Air Gormiti invisible.

* In ''WesternAnimation/MiraculousLadybug'' "Style Queen", we learn that Plagg, the cat-like kwami of destruction, was responsible for making the dinosaurs go extinct. And also sinking Atlantis. [[OverlyLongGag As well as leaning the Tower of Piza]].

* In a ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' episode of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' (therefore, non-canon), Homer gets his hand caught in a toaster and when he "fixes" it, he travels back in time to the age of dinosaurs, where his simple sneeze causes a domino effect of dying dinos, causing ripple effects back to his present time.

* One of three alien races who commonly interact with Earth humans in TabletopGame/ConspiracyX are the "Saurians", mysterious reptilian aliens with many forms who want to take over. [[spoiler:They are actually the dinosaurs, they owned the planet long before us, and they had extremely advanced technology. What finally did them in was an experimental FTL drive that failed in the middle of a huge space civil war, trapping every single Saurian still alive at the time within the temporal stasis field around an artificial black hole. It took the black hole 65 million years to shrink to the point that some Saurian ships have managed to free themselves of its pull, and the crew members have discovered, to their great dismay, that while they were gone... all kinds of things happened to their planet.]]

** Dinosaurs aren't actually extinct: they survived in the form of birds. Next time you eat [chicken/turkey/duck/[[BreadEggsMilkSquick bald eagle]]], you will be eating an evolved dinosaur. What most people think of as dinosaurs are actually non-avian dinosaurs, which are quite extinct.

** ''Series/ZyudenSentaiKyoryuger'' has the Deboss Legion exterminate the dinosaurs and try to do the same to humanity, with three recurring monsters having directly killed the dinos: an Ice Age one, a disease-themed one, and a meteor one (reflecting major theories as to the real-life extinction). They haven't regained their full power yet -- the Ice Age monster was even first episode cannon fodder -- but they're still usually a step up from a normal MonsterOfTheWeek.

* "WesternAnimation/GormittiTheLordsOfNatureReturn" reveals that the Dinosaurs were wiped out because their equivalent species on the Gorm turned themselves invisible for a sufficiently long time, with the meteor being “what they want you to think”. The same thing threatens to happen to the birds when a spell is cast that turns the Air Gormitti invisible.

** A (suspected) Child of the Void, [[spoiler:Fegrð, the Author of Beautiful Ends]], was one of the final nails in the coffin for the Dinosaurs. Given that the last couple of disasters the Dinosaurs already went through, he claims he was there mostly to "[[CoupDeGrace finish the job]]".

* ''ComicBook/AtomicRobo'': According to Dr. Dinosaur, mammal energies from the Large Hadron Collider in the present traveled back to the past, killing all of the dinosaurs except for the Doctor himself (who gained his GENIUS INTELLIGENCE!). Dr. Atomic Robo Tesla strongly disagrees with this hypothesis (but then again, Dr. Dinosaur's insane pseudoscience has an odd habit of ''actually working''...).

* Now it's pretty certain that there ''was'' an asteroid impact that occurred right around the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction and that this was a significant contributor to the mass extinction event. A big reason this trope is still so pervasive is two fold. Firstly, there is still some ambiguity as to if the impact and resulting catastrophes did the gruntwork of the event itself or if it kicked off a chain reaction that did the majority of the ecosystem collapse. Secondly, while the asteroid impact hypothesis has been around since the 1980s, unambiguous support only sprung up in the following decades. Given many now-adult writers were children during this ambiguous period, you'll see this trope crop up more in their stories than youth tales which near unanimously point to the asteroid as the author might be under the impression the true cause of the extinction is still mysterious. The short of it is there was a mystery in the 1980s and early 1990s as to why the dinosaurs perished, but further findings have given reality significantly less wiggle room.

Similarly fantastic theories have sometimes been suggested to explain why other species went extinct, though due to SmallReferencePools, most writers tend to ignore the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian-Triassic_extinction_event Permian–Triassic extinction]], which was the biggest mass extinction ever. The [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triassic-Jurassic_extinction_event Triassic–Jurassic extinction]], which was almost as widespread as the Cretaceous–Paleogene and directly led to dinosaurs becoming the dominant forms of life for the next 135 million years, is even more obscure. Apparently, it's only the fall of the dinosaurs, and not their rise to prominence, that's deemed interesting enough for fiction. Despite the fact that both of these events have considerably more uncertainty about their causes (and thus more room to invent a Phlebotinum-based explanation) than the by this point rather well-understood Cretaceous–Paleogene.

* In an extended cut of ''Anime/DragonBallZBattleOfGods'', a throwaway line by [[PhysicalGod Beerus]] recounts that he went to Earth millions of years ago, and that he wiped out the dinosaurs [[DisproportionateRetribution because they were rude to him]]. This is reconfirmed in ''Anime/DragonBallSuper''. [[SeriesContinuityError This is ignoring]] the [[WorldOfWeirdness weird world of Dragon Ball]] showed us many times that it still has LivingDinosaurs (both regular and anthropomorphic). Then again, later arcs in ''Super'' show that Beerus is practically the poster child for TheGodsMustBeLazy and ''very'' bad at his job as a Destroyer Deity despite his absurdly high power level, so it's totally in-character for him to have just plain missed some.

* When discussing the several different MarvelUniverse explanations the people at ''[[Website/LiveJournal scans_daily]]'' came up with this:

* In ''Literature/StartideRising'', it's mentioned that when the Galactics leave a planet fallow, they dispose of all signs of civilization in a subduction zone, which usually results in a thin layer of iridium being found in the fossil record later as these rare elements come back up to the surface through vulcanism. There is a thin layer of iridium right where the Cretaceous ends.

* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' has the Mokole, werelizards tasked with serving as Gaia's Memory who are the oldest (still-living) Changing Breed in existence... so yes, they were (and still are) dinosaurs. They had a massive empire until the "Wonder-Work" - or, as we call it, the K-T extinction - happened. Whether it ''was'' Phlebotinum is up in the air, but the living Mokole, who still have the memories of their ancestors, attribute this event to everything from a not-yet-corrupted Wyrm trying to restore balance to Gaia herself reaching down to slap the Mokole for their hubris and allow mammals a chance to evolve.

* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'' has the Mokole, werelizards tasked with serving as Gaia's Memory who are the oldest (still-living) Changing Breed in existence... so yes, they were (and still are) dinosaurs. They had a massive empire until the "Wonder-Work" - or, as we call it, the K-T extinction - happened. The living Mokole, who still have the memories of their ancestors, attribute this event to everything from a not-yet-corrupted Wyrm trying to restore balance to Gaia herself reaching down to slap the Mokole for their hubris and allow mammals a chance to evolve.

* In ''Film/PacificRim'' there's a deliberately-ambiguous statement that the dinosaurs were [[spoiler:either killed off by Kaiju, or were the first failed attempt at ''creating'' Kaiju.]]