History Main / PhlebotinumKilledTheDinosaurs

* Alternatively, in ''WebAnimation/{{Asdfmovie}}'', mine turtles [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DI5_sQ8O-7Y killed the dinosaurs]].
* [[WebVideo/AtopTheFourthWall Linkara]] turned them into underwear.
* ...or maybe it was Red from ''WebAnimation/DickFigures''.
* [[WebVideo/FreemansMind Gordon Freeman killed the dinosaurs.]] Or rather, merely boasts that he did.

* It wasn't a meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, it was [[WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries Tristan Timothy Taylor]]...

* ''Fanfic/RiseOfTheGaleforces'' actually gives [[ShownTheirWork as close to the correct scientific explanation]] as the author -- and his AuthorAvatar -- is aware of, when he briefly interrupts the narrative to correct several other characters who thought that a heatwave killed off the dinosaurs.[[note]]While they weren't exactly wrong in a sense -- the blast front from the Chixiclub meteor impact is thought to have packed the same energy as 100 teratonnes of TNT (420 ZJ), over a billion times the energy of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- the original context referred to a heatwave produced by the sun. The food chain collapse that led to the extinction was because the dust from the impact ''blocked out'' the sun, causing most of the plant life to die out and take the food chain with it.[[/note]] Humorously, [[WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles Frozone]] later gets to make a jab at the infamous "Ice age" line from ''Film/BatmanAndRobin'', as noted below.

* In the ''TabletopGame/DarkMatter'' 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 AppliedPhlebotinum.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': According to [[Recap/DoctorWhoS19E6Earthshock "Earthshock"]], the "meteor" that wiped out the dinosaurs was actually a far-future human spaceship which had been hijacked by the Cybermen and accidentally sent millions of years back in time (they had intended to crash it into the Earth in its own era to wipe out humanity). [[spoiler:Which had Adric on board]]. %% The identity of the villains of this serial has long since passed ItWasHisSled territory.

* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager'' suggests some of them evolved, built spaceships and just outright left. The rest? Probably SOL.

*** In another novel he claimed that he gave humanity fire as a joke (predictably, the first thing they did was light one another on fire and laugh hysterically). The other Q were angry, as this made humans dominant instead of cockroaches, and punished him in the way we know from the Prometheus myth. The Franchise/StarTrekExpandedUniverse doesn't keep a tight grip on continuity, but InUniverse, the best answer is that Q is an UnreliableNarrator.

* On ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', Eugene suggests that the ZombieApocalypse may have killed the dinosaurs. He doesn't think it's what happened, [[RuleOfCool but he likes the idea]].

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', Fry encounters a giant brain that knows ''everything''. The result of one of his questions is the page-quote above.

* Subverted in ''WesternAnimation/JusticeLeague Unlimited'' "The Once and Future Thing". Chronos sends Chucko back to the time of the dinosaurs in punishment for betraying him. Chucko draws his weapon and confidently states he'll be "running this dump in a few years" and we have just enough time to think he killed the dinosaurs...until he sees an asteroid ComingInHot.
-->'''Chronos:''' Do you know what killed the dinosaurs?
-->'''Bonk:''' Uh, no sir?
-->'''Chronos:''' [[BondOneLiner Well]] ''[[BondOneLiner Chucko]]'' [[BondOneLiner does.]]

*** Wormwood being described as a celestial body falling to Earth can obviously be compared to the asteroid that fell to Earth and bootstrapped the dinosaurs' judgement day and the water turning bitter after Wormwood fell to Earth was much like how common watering holes were poisoned following the aftermath of the collision releasing toxic chemicals as well as the drastic acidification of the ocean that accompanied it.
*** The world shaking to its core during the start of many apocalypse scenarios can be thought similarly to the magnitude 11 earthquake that ripped apart entire mountains and islands not long after impact.
*** The ring of megatsunamis drowning entire archipelagos and shorelines created by the Collison could resemble a real life Great Flood ala Noah's Ark.

** Dinosaurs died from Noah's Flood; most from the flood itself (along with every other species), and the few left that were on the ark died out because either they or their food sources couldn't handle the resulting climate changes.

*** In another novel he claimed that he gave humanity fire as a joke (predictably, the first thing they did was light one another on fire and laugh hysterically). The other Q were angry, as this made humans dominant instead of cockroaches, and punished him in the way we know from the Prometheus myth. The StarTrekExpandedUniverse doesn't keep a tight grip on continuity, but InUniverse, the best answer is that Q is an UnreliableNarrator.

* In ''Film/BatmanAndRobin'', 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. [[ArtisticLicensePaleontology He is wrong]].

* ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary'': A massive alien spaceship passed through a cometary halo, and their mass disrupted various orbits. Eight million years later, a very large rock came down on Earth, while the dinosaurs tried desperately to build a flying machine to escape. Played with in that they ''weren't'' actually killed; thanks to a probe left in orbit the aliens were able to pick up the dinosaurs' early radio transmissions and evacuated them in time. The "feather folk" have been residents on that same PlanetSpaceship ever since.

* The Manga version of ''Anime/Scryed'' shows that Kazuma accidentally killed the dinosaurs with one of his punches (that broke through the walls of space and time).

* The Manga version of ''Anime/SCryed'' shows that Kazuma accidentally killed the dinosaurs with one of his punches (that broke through the walls of space and time).

-->'''Tour guide:''' [[ADateWithRosiePalms Because you touch yourself at night.]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'', Fry encounters a giant brain that knows ''everything''. The result is the page-quote above.

* Good ol' [[Creator/HPLovecraft Lovecraft]] actually subverts this trope. Apparently Cthulhu and his minions were the cause of the ''Permian'' extinction. [[labelnote:Note]] Since the Permian extinction allowed dinosaurs to dominate the earth, this too is an [[InvertedTrope inversion]] [[/labelnote]]
** Some fanon sources claim Cthulhu was also responsible for wiping out the Dinosaurs, cause that would be [[RuleOfCool awesome]].

* Averted with more or less every single fossil ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'', since there isn't any mention of an extinction event 65 million years ago that killed off such critters as Aerodactyl or Tyrantrum ''en masse'' (and in fact, all the fossil Pokemon are stated to have originally existed 100 million years ago). Some of the FlavorText gives relatively plausible reasons for why certain specific fossil Pokemon went extinct, such as that Omastar's shell eventually became too heavy for it to catch prey.

* In ''VideoGame/FateGrandOrder'', the sentient divine bacteria that would later become the Mayan pantheon arrived on Earth via the Chicxulub asteroid. Quetzalcoatl claims that said asteroid was also the Mayan underworld Xibalba.

* Inverted in ''Film/SuperMarioBros'', with the meteorite that caused the dinosaurs' extinction splitting the world into parallel dimensions, one of which had the dinosaurs continue to thrive and evolve into sentient beings.

* According to [[Wiki/SCPFoundation SCP-]][[http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-1050 1050]], a race of {{Eldritch Abomination}}s known only as '[[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast The Destroyers]]' were responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, as well as ''virtually every other mass extinction'' in Earth's history.

* In ''Literature/TheDresdenFiles'', [[HornyDevils Thomas Raith]] claims that [[PowerOfLove love killed the dinosaurs]]. Harry [[ArtisticLicenseBiology calls him out on it]]. Essentially, the tale talks about how the meteor did wipe out 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. This is a vampire folk tale being told to [[BookDumb a wizard with a GED]], and should be taken with a grain of salt, especially given that some dinosaurs did have strong nesting instincts.

Similarly fantastic theories have sometimes been suggested to explain why other species went extinct, though due to SmallReferencePools, most writers [[TheGreatestHistoryNeverTold 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).

** The "Phlebotinum" part is averted in ''Series/KishiryuSentaiRyusoulger'' -- it ''was'' just a meteor in this version. The catch is that an evil tribe fled to space before the impact, and now they want their planet back.

* According to one issue of the ''[[Magazine/RedDwarf Red Dwarf Smegazine]]'', it was the Dwarfers, who accidentally kill them all via a neutrino-tachyon shockwave when trying to get back to their own time (after having accidentally been sent back to this time period).

* [[Machinima/FreemansMind Gordon Freeman killed the dinosaurs.]] Or rather, merely boasts that he did.

* From ''I, Cthulhu'' by Creator/NeilGaiman: