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Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs (view source)

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{{trope}}
[[File:PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs_3901.png|link=Futurama (Animation)|frame| The mystery is forever solved]]
 
{{quote|'''Fry:''' Uh, what really killed the dinosaurs?<br />
'''Big Brain:''' [[Large Ham|MEEEEEEEEEE!]]|''[[Futurama (Animation)|Futurama]]''}}
 
While writing a story, an author needs a way to show [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|how bad things would get if the]] [[Big Bad]] [[The End of the World Asas We Know It|took control or the]] [[Applied Phlebotinum]] [[Made of Explodium|blew up]]. So the author attributes some historical disaster to their plot. And what's the biggest disaster one can imagine?
 
Why, none other than the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs, better known as (depending on the source) either the K-T<ref>Cretaceous-Tertiary</ref> or the K-Pg<ref>Cretaceous-[[Spell My Name Withwith an "S"|Paleogene/Palaeogene]]</ref> extinction in paleontological terms. Not only did this extinction wipe out almost two-thirds of all life on Earth and dethrone the dinosaurs, it also set the stage for most of the modern ecosystems we see today. The extinction did this by making the planet a giant hellhole.
 
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 impact, debating has made the K-Pg extinction ideal for the sheer amount of theories as to why the dinosaurs died out; rivaling that of [[Who Shot JFK?]]. What's one more [[Epileptic Tree|crazy theory]] going to hurt?
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* In one chapter of ''[[Franken Fran]]'', [[Mad Scientist|Fran]] claims that the dinosaurs went extinct because they were too large and inefficient to survive, to try and justify her disbelief at how the [[Monster of the Week]] could even exist. [[You Fail Biology Forever|She fails biology forever]] [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|and makes paleontologists cry]], but kudos to having a [[Tyrannosaurus Rex|T.rex with protofeathers]].
** She's a ''surgeon'', not a paleontologist. Her grasp of anything outside medicine is minimal at best.
* ChoRyuJin killed the dinosaurs in ''[[Gao Gai GarGaoGaiGar]]''. A giant meteor was involved but mostly it was because of ChoRyuJin.
* Getter Rays in ''[[Getter Robo]]'' are deadly to dinosaurs. They didn't completely wipe out the Dinosaurs though, as the Dinosaur Empire was able to hide in the Magma Layer. Hence the heroes using Getter Robo to finish the job when the Dinos show up in modern times.
* The meteor was deliberately dropped by aliens in ''[[Guyver]]'', to clear out their initial experimental soldiers -- dinosaurs -- and make way for whatever survived.
* From [[Keroro Gunsou]], Angol Mois' mother is credited for this (in context, the Angol are a race of ''planet-splitting world destroyers'', so this crosses into [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]].)
** The first movie contradicts this however, by showing murals of ancient Keronian weapon Kiruru of being responsible.
* The Manga version of [[ScryedS-Cry-ed]] shows that Kazuma accidentally killed the dinosaurs with one of his punches (that broke through the walls of space and time).
 
 
== Comicbooks ==
* In the ''[[Two Thousand2000 AD]]'' serial ''Flesh'', the dinosaurs were wiped out due to over hunting by time-traveling cowboys. Yeah...
* On a similar note, Jason from ''[[FoxTrot]]'' theorizes that time-traveling big game hunters killed the dinosaurs.
* ''[[The Far Side]]'' states that dinosaurs died out via smoking. This becomes [[Hilarious in Hindsight]] when one finds out that the cannabis family (which also includes marijuana) were important ground cover plants in the Mesozoic. Maybe Larson isn't so off the marker after all.
* In ''[[Predator]]: Concrete Jungle'', it is said that the Predators exterminated the dinosaurs. [[Canon Dis Continuity|This is ignored by virtually all other Predator works]].
* A dinosaur hold the wrong end of the wand when performing his vanishing spell, so they all went to the Land of Lost Things (''[[Donald Duck]]''). [[I Just Shot Marvin in Thethe Face|Remember kids, improper handling of dangerous equipment grants horrible consequences.]]
* The comic continuation of ''[[Angel]]'' has a [[Show Within a Show|in-universe movie adaptation]] of Angel's adventures claiming that it was a [[Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot|Vampire Tyrannosaurus]] that killed all the Dinosaurs, after having cursed God in his "own Dinosaur way" after loosing a mate, and Satan giving him the power.
* Subverted in ''[[Dilbert]]''; dinosaurs aren't extinct, [[He's Just Hiding|they're just hiding in your furniture]]. Bob the Dinosaur managed to evade humans for years thanks to wearing tennis shoes for fast running. All of the "fossils" that are discovered in modern times were purchased at dinosaur prank novelty stores and thrown into tarpits just to fool people.
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== Fan Works ==
* In the [[Dark Fic]] [http://de.jihad.net/lib/bull-dotb.txt Day of the Barney], [[Barney and Friends (TV)|Barney and Baby Bop]] summoned the meteor that caused the K-T extinction. Which, believe it or not, isn't the most heinous thing they did.
 
 
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* ''[[Puma Man]]''
{{quote| '''Jane:''' So, dinosaurs went extinct when they no longer knew how to love one another?<br />
'''[[MST3KMystery Science Theater 3000|Tom Servo]]''': [[You Fail Biology Forever|In a wrong kind of way, yeah.]] }}
* 1998's ''[[Mothra]] 3'' places the blame on the Cretaceous version of [[Eldritch Abomination|King Ghidorah]], who now plans to do the same to Humans by devouring the life-energies of our kids.
** It's implied that Desghidorah from the first film was the reason life went extinct on ''Mars'' and that it was going to do the same to prehistoric Earth until Mothra managed to [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|imprison him for all eternity.]]
* In ''[[Batman and Robin (Filmfilm)|Batman and Robin]]'', Mr. Freeze thinks the Ice Age killed the dinosaurs - a bit of a suspect statement coming from a scientist, even if paleontology isn't his field. [[Somewhere a Paleontologist Is Crying|He is of course wrong]].
* The opening narration for ''[[Night of the Comet]]'' states that the comet (which turns most animal life into red dust) last came close to Earth when the dinosaurs disappeared.
* In ''[[Super Mario Bros. (Filmfilm)|Super Mario Bros]]: [[The Movie]],'' it turns out that the dinosaurs were less 'wiped out' and more 'sent to another dimension when the meteor impact split the worlds.' As seen below, a certain [[Super Sentai]] series either borrowed a plot point from the oddest of sources, or stumbled onto a hilarious coincidence.
* [[Fantasia]] goes for a more realistic option, where the dinosaurs died out because of droughts, causing mass starvation as well. It's notable that Fantasia was made before it was discovered that an asteroid impact caused mass extinction.
 
 
== Literature ==
* In ''[[Monster (Literaturenovel)|Monster]]'', [[Big Bad]] Lotus mentions having to "undo" the dinosaurs because they were part of the {{spoiler|universe's master plan to destroy her}}.
* In ''[[The Dresden Files]]'', [[Horny Devils|Thomas Raith]] claims that [[Power of Love|love killed the dinosaurs]]. Harry [[You Fail Biology Forever|calls him out on it]].
** This probably deserves a little elaboration - yes, the meteor ''did'' wipe out all the big stuff, but the dinosaurs didn't regain their position because mammals could feel love and be devoted to their mates and offspring, making them more likely to survive.
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*** Or the story predates the discovery of dinosaur nesting behaviors. It's a ''vampire'' folk tale, after all, and could've been concocted shortly after the word "dinosaur" was invented.
** In any case, it's a throwaway line used to illustrate why love is so dangerous to the White Court, and has absolutely no effect on the plot.
* The entire novel ''[[Tyrannosaur Canyon (Literature)|Tyrannosaur Canyon]]'' revolves around finding that [[Imported Alien Phlebotinum]] killed the dinosaurs. {{spoiler|Specifically, that aliens sent a disease to wipe out the dinosaurs so mammals would diversify and eventually evolve into humans. Yeah...}}
* The [[Monster of the Week]] in ''[[Animorphs (Literature)|Megamorphs #2]]'' causes the extinction of the dinosaurs by redirecting a meteor earthward. To rephrase it, the dinosaurs were killed by a plain old meteor....FLUNG BY ALIENS!
** To wipe out OTHER aliens who wanted to settle on Earth and [[Historical In-Joke|plant broccoli]].
* Good ol' [[HPH.P. Lovecraft|Lovecraft]] actually subverts this trope. Apparently Cthulhu and his minions were the cause of the ''Permian'' extinction.
** Some fanon sources claim Cthulhu was also responsible for wiping out the Dinosaurs, cause that would be [[Rule of Cool|awesome]]
* [[Isaac Asimov]]'s ''Day of the Hunters'' kills off the dinosaurs due to overhunting by intelligent dinosaurs...with [[Frickin Lazers|Frickin Lazer Guns]]!
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* In ''The Science Of [[Discworld]]'', the Terribly Dull Lizards -- like many organisms from other time periods, very nearly including us -- were indeed wiped out by a random and cataclysmic meteorite impact. It's still [[Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs]], because the reason there are so many rocks drifting around the solar system to ''become'' meteorites is because the UU student body had been tossing them at "The Target" (= Jupiter) as part of a cross-cosmic video game, and they never bothered to sweep up their unused ammunition.
* In Kage Baker's [[The Company Novels]], a defective Immortal claims to have wiped out the dinosaurs through his abuse of time travel. However, he's also quite clearly insane, so it isn't certain if he's telling the truth.
* In the [[Star Trek the Lost Era]] novel ''The Buried Age'', the Permian extinction event is chosen instead - it was a consequence of an artificially-induced galaxy-wide disaster. The [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] known as Manraloth accidentally caused the entire galactic population to [[Ascend to Aa Higher Plane of Existence]], releasing terrible amounts of energy which irradiated planets. In the aftermath, the artificialy maintained habitats of the Manraloth degraded, destabilizing stars, among other dangerous side-effects. The galaxy was an irradiated hellhole until sapient life evolved again millions of years later.
* In ''[[The HitchhikersHitchhiker's Guide to Thethe Galaxy]]'', obviously dinosaurs conflict with the Earth's true ten million year age. In the novels it's mentioned by Slartibartfast that fake fossils were installed during the planet's construction. This could either have some vital purpose to the intended function of the planet, or the Magratheans could just be [[Doing It for Thethe Art]].
* In ''[[Dirk GentlysGently's Holistic Detective Agency]]'', it's not the dinosaurs whose extinction is blamed on phlebotinum, but that of the dodo. A time-traveler indirectly caused it to be wiped out because he'd meddled with prehistory to save the coelacanth.
* In [[Charles Pellegrino]]'s ''Flying to Valhalla'', it's suggested that the mass extinction between the Eocene and the Oligocene {{spoiler|was engineered by aliens to prevent Earth from becoming a threat}}.
* [[Jack Chalker]]'s [[Well World]] series has it that when the universe was manually rebooted, a world was chosen for each of the races to get seeded upon. Earth came up almost perfect for humanity, but had developed dinosaurs naturally. So the Guardian tweaked the axial tilt of the world slightly, thus killing most of them off to make room for the incoming colonists. Needless to say, time was moving at an extremely fast pace during this - only moments passed by during the process.
* Author and physician Robin Cook's novel ''Invasion'', had the dinosaurs completely wiped out by super advanced alien entities hoping to assimilate intelligent creatures like humanity into their collective, showing that despite his expertise in medicine, Cook knew jack-squat about paleontology.
* Somewhere there is a novel which describes how the dinosaurs died off after a war between various alien species in the solar system destroyed the millennia-old antigrav generators which had been keeping earth's gravity artificially low. The overgrown dinosaurs simply collapsed. The defending alien species was also using some dinosaurs as living tanks.
* The [[Ryk Spoor]] and [[Eric Fint]] novel ''[[Boundary (Literature)|Boundary]]'' (and the sequels) also used the alien-directed asteroid projectile explanation (apparently in a civil war against bases on Earth).
* In ''Dracula Unbound'', the extinction of the dinosaurs was triggered by a nuclear bomb set off by time-travelers in order to wipe out a nest of vampires, which evolved from pterosaurs.
* The Steve Alten novel ''Domain'', the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was in fact {{spoiler|a spaceship of an evil multi-dimensional entity that was shot down by the good aliens, who then land on the planet (Earth), genetically mess with the local fauna to eventually create Humanity, create the Mayan civilization, and use its prophecies to foretell the end of the world which will happen when the bad alien's ship gains enough power to reactivate, on December 21, 2012}}.
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* ''[[Kyoryu Sentai Zyuranger]]'' gives us Bandora {{spoiler|:whose son was killed by a dinosaur. She sold her soul to the devil to gain the power to destroy the dinosaurs. When she was sealed, only two dinosaur eggs remained. When she's revived, her main goal is to destroy those two eggs.}}
* ''[[Engine Sentai Go-onger]]'' has the villains reviving the monster who destroyed the dinosaurs. Yes, that makes ''three'' possible fates for the dinosaurs in ''[[Super Sentai]]''. One wonders what happened to them in the universe where the team ups take place...
* Baldrick's shorts. (from the short film shown at the Millenium Dome, ''[[Black AdderBlackadder|Blackadder Back and Forth]]'')
* ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' suggests they evolved, built spaceships and just outright left.
** The [[Expanded Universe]] intimates that Q killed the dinosaurs after using a spatial rift to divert an asteroid hurled at him by another Q. He would later be charged with overseeing the rebuilding of Earth's ecosystem, including nurturing any sentients that might arise. He left a gift for us in the form of the [[Everything's Better Withwith Platypi|platypus]].
*** Bonus points for explicitly stating that the asteroid had iridium in it, which was determined to be true for the dinosaur-ending asteroid.
* ''[[The X -Files]]'' two-parter "The Sixth Extinction" briefly skirts the topic of what killed the dinosaurs, suggesting that [[Ancient Astronauts]] visited Earth five times before, destroying its dominant species and introducing new ones. The mammals (including us humans) are the latest masters of earth, introduced after the "fifth extinction"--a.k.a. the Dinosaur Extinction Event. And our own time to go is [[Just Before the End|nearing fast]].
* In ''[[Dinosaurs]],'' the last episode revealed that the dinosaurs were wiped out by {{spoiler|Earl Sinclair. No, this wasn't one of the funny 'paleontologist in the present' episodes; we end with the family shivering as the ice piles up, Earl having to explain to his family why they are all about to die.}}
 
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== Tabletop Games ==
* In [[D 20D20 Modern]]'s Dark•Matter setting, while not specifically mentioning the dinosaurs, numerous historical disasters, and also times of prosperity, are tied to the ebb and flow of dark matter, used as the setting's [[Applied Phlebotinum]].
* One of three alien races who commonly interact with Earth humans in [[Conspiracy X]] 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 just about 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 it's pull, and the crew members have discovered, to their great dismay, that while they were gone... All kinds of things happened to their planet.}}
 
 
== Video Games ==
* ''[[Chrono Trigger (Video Game)|Chrono Trigger]]'' has the dinosaurs being killed off because of the fall of [[Outside Context Villain|Lavos]]. The world isn't Earth, but it's [[All Planets Are Earthlike|similar enough]] that this event occurred 65 million years ago like the actual extinction of the dinosaurs. For contrast, the rulers of said dinosaurs were [[The Reptilians|bipedal and sentient]].
* ''[[Final Fantasy VII]]'' hints at this trope. There are enormous, dinosaur-like bones on the Northern Continent. You even run down one's spine in the final dungeon, which is where a cosmic horror meteor thing hit.
* [[X-COM]] Terror From The Deep makes the asteroid a crashed colony ship.
* The [[Artifact of Doom|Black Marker]] from ''[[Dead Space (Franchiseseries)|Dead Space]]'' lore was found in the Chicxulub and is about 65 million years old. No way that's a coincidence.
* The [[Pokémon]] [[Pokémon Black and White|Genesect]] is thought of as having wiped out the dinosaurs, as the species lived right before the Permian extinction and a [[Fossil Revival|revived]] and enhanced specimen is an [[Expy]] of the infamous [[Purposefully Overpowered]] mon Mewtwo. Realistically, it was probably a casualty rather than the cause.
* One of the missions in Super [[Scribblenauts (Video Game)|Scribblenauts]] is to cause the dinosaurs to go extinct without asteroids or weapons. You have many options: plague, flooding, drought, a black hole, [[God]], [[Cthulhu Mythos|Cthulhu]]...
 
 
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* In [[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]], Black Mage [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2004/06/17/episode-430-very-long-range/ Evilwizardington] does it.
* One [[Dinosaur Comics]] [http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=997 guest comic] has God throwing a meteor at the Earth after one too many complaints by a certain T. rex.
* According to ''[[RavensRaven's Dojo]]'', Jesusaurus absolved them of their sins and they were all taken into heaven by the Rapture. Except for the sinful T-Rexes, doomed to burn eternally in engines built by primates.
* According to ''[[Happle Tea]]'', [http://www.happletea.com/comics/patently-false/ Joseph Smith killed the dinosaurs].
 
 
== Web Original ==
* [[Atop the Fourth Wall (Web Video)|Linkara]] turned them into underwear.
* It wasn't a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, it was [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series (Web Video)|Tristan Timothy Taylor]]...
* ...or maybe it was Red from ''[[Dick Figures]]''.
* [[Freemans Mind|Gordon Freeman killed the dinosaurs.]] Or rather, merely boasts that he did.
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== Western Animation ==
* One episode of ''[[The Emperor's New School (Animation)|The Emperors New School]]'' has Yzma combine a time machine, invisibility device and an evil [[MP 3]] player (it only plays disco music!), which is then lost in time. It becomes a [[Brick Joke]] at the end of the episode when Kuzco flips the show to a documentary about dinosaurs, who begin dying off from the disco music.
* In ''[[Samurai Jack]]'', Aku falls to Earth in the form of a meteorite. Guess who happens to be in the blast radius when Aku hits.
* Fry finds out what ''really'' killed the dinosaurs in one episode of ''[[Futurama (Animation)|Futurama]]'', when he encounters a giant brain that knows ''everything''.
{{quote| '''Fry:''' Uh, what killed the dinosaurs?<br />
'''Big Brain:''' [[Large Ham|MEEEEEEEEEE!]] }}
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** But she didn't -- it was [[No Celebrities Were Harmed|Sylvester Calzone]] doing a species-wide [[No-Holds-Barred Beatdown]].
{{quote| '''Calzone:''' Uh, you're da species, and I'm da extinction!!}}
* In one episode of ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'', lampooning [[The Bible]], a pig in the Garden of Eden warns Adam (Homer) against eating fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. One of the dinosaurs ate one and well...that's why there aren't any more of them.
* In ''[[Bionic Six]]'', the protagonists are sent back to find out what killed the dinosaurs. Naturally, they end up getting involved with it in some way...
* ''[[Family Guy (Animation)|Family Guy]]'''s answer...I don't know, but they died [[A Date Withwith Rosie Palms|because you touch yourself at night]].
* [[American Dad (Animation)|That's just preposterous, dinosaurs going extinct]]. [[Hollywood History|They were just forced underground during the last human-dinosaur wars and]] [[You Fail Biology Forever|we occasionally find their bones sometimes]].
** Another episode has Stan die and force his way into Heaven, where he finds God playing with some toy dinosaurs in His office.
{{quote| '''God:''' These guys are awesome. Why'd I ever send them to Mars?}}
* "[[Justice League|Do you know what killed the dinosaurs?]] Well, ''[[You Have Failed Me|Chucko]]'' does."
** To be fair, that ''was'' the meteor. The [[Big Bad]] simply time-shifted an unreliable henchman to ground zero, a few seconds before impact.
* In ''[[Jonny Quest: The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (Animation)|The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest]]'', the dinosaurs were wiped out by an incredibly powerful time traveling nuke.
* There was a ''[[Ren and Stimpy]]'' episode where an old man told the titular characters several ridiculous theories on how the dinosaurs died, one of which was that "they thought they were [[Superman]], and jumped off the roof."
 
 
== Real Life ==
* While it's pretty certain that there ''was'' an asteroid impact that occurred right around the K-T extinction, there is a significant amount of debate as to whether this impact was the primary cause of the extinction, a trigger that released a [[Sealed Evil in Aa Can|bigger disaster]] such as an underground gas bubble or super volcano, one of a number of nasty things that were going on in the biosphere around that time, or pretty much unrelated to the extinction itself.
** Of course dinosaurs aren't actually extinct, they survived in the form of birds. Next time you eat [Chicken/Turkey/Duck/[[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|Bald Eagle]]], you will be eating an evolved dinosaur. What most people think of as dinosaurs are actually Non-Avian Dinosaurs, unlike their avian counterparts, they are quite extinct.
* Often ignored in fictional portrayals is that the dinosaurs were the top of a food-chain-wide extinction event; the "direct" victims of the event (whatever it was) probably would have been plants, algae, and plankton, and it was ''their'' disappearance that killed the animals which ate them, killing the animals which ate ''them'', etc.
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