--- title: Were Asteroids The Only Cause of The Dinosaur's Extinction? description: A newly-released paleontology report suggests the dinosaurs were made extinct by more causes than we previously thought. canonical: https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/ author: TIME Video article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-07-29T14:53:12.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T09:22:59.766Z article:section: Science og:title: Were Asteroids The Only Cause of The Dinosaur's Extinction? og:description: A newly-released paleontology report suggests the dinosaurs were made extinct by more causes than we previously thought. og:url: https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a083b2dd48da2c/69869d893617600b1490d3eb/1280-dino.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Dinosaurs og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Were Asteroids The Only Cause of The Dinosaur's Extinction? twitter:description: A newly-released paleontology report suggests the dinosaurs were made extinct by more causes than we previously thought. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a083b2dd48da2c/69869d893617600b1490d3eb/1280-dino.jpeg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # What Killed The Dinosaurs? Bad Luck, Study Suggests by [TIME Video](https://time.com/author/time-video/) ## TIME Video Jul 29, 2014 2:53 PM UTC  by [TIME Video](https://time.com/author/time-video/) ## TIME Video Jul 29, 2014 2:53 PM UTC While it’s widely accepted that dinosaurs were made extinct by a six-mile long asteroid that hit Earth, a new study posits that the asteroid was simply the last piece of bad fortune in a run of poor luck that killed the species. According to the newly released paleontology report titled ‘The Extinction of the Dinosaurs’ – published by the journal _Biological Reviews –_ the dinosaurs could have likely survived the asteroid, had it not been for the unfortunate environmental conditions they were already facing as a species. Hebrivores were already decreasing in population at the time, says the report, and the loss in biodiversity created a great deal of problems for dinosaurs, most specifically less food available at the bottom of the food chain. “If the asteroid hit a few million years earlier, when dinosaurs were more diverse, or a few million years later, when they had a chance to recover as they often had done before after diversity losses, then dinosaurs probably wouldn’t have gone extinct,” said University of Edinburgh paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Brusatte, who led the study. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/"},"headline":"What Killed The Dinosaurs? Bad Luck, Study Suggests","datePublished":"2014-07-29T14:53:12.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T09:22:59.766Z","description":"The asteroid was simply the straw that broke the camptosaurus's back","url":"https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/","keywords":["Paleontology","Environment","dinosaurs"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a083b2dd48da2c/69869d893617600b1490d3eb/1280-dino.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Video","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-video/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltb4a083b2dd48da2c/69869d893617600b1490d3eb/1280-dino.jpeg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Dinosaurs","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/paleontology/","name":"Paleontology"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3048738/dinosaurs-asteroid-killed-extinction/","name":"What Killed The Dinosaurs? Bad Luck, Study Suggests"}}]}] ```