Art by Luis V. Rey
66 million years ago, a meteor the size of a mountain crashed into what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. Everything in the blast radius was incinerated in an instant, and the force of the impact created shockwaves that caused earthquakes and tsunamis worldwide. The meteor disintegrated into a cloud of dust that blocked out sunlight for years, which killed all the plants and caused food chains to collapse worldwide. Around 75% of all life died.
While not the Earth's most devastating mass extinction, the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg for short)note is by far the most famous because it killed the Mesozoic's big, charismatic reptiles: the plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, pterosaurs, and most dinosaurs. As a result, this event is often depicted in media for dramatic effect. Usually, it's treated as a tragedy that such magnificent creatures were wiped out by a force of nature beyond their control. On the plus side, it gives Meek Mesozoic Mammals the opportunity to finally take over.
Since the idea that a meteor caused the extinction was first proposed in The '70s and wasn't widely accepted until The '90s, older works may depict the dinosaurs going extinct for a different reason, or leave the cause ambiguous.
Compare Colony Drop, Just Before the End, and Apocalypse How. The Law of Time Travel Coincidences means that time-travellers end up here a lot. If the extinction is caused by something that was never the scientific consensus, that's Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs or The Dinosaurs Had It Coming. Contrast Alternate-History Dinosaur Survival.
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Dinosaur King: In the Season 2 premiere, the Backlander time machine ship takes the Alpha Gang and the D-Team to the Cretaceous Period. In just a few minutes, it is revealed that they arrived on the very day the meteor that killed the dinosaurs is due to hit.
Fan Works
- The Loud House End Of Days: The prologue features a scene from the final days of the Mesozoic Era, with the dinosaurs blissfully unaware that the famous asteroid will soon end their reign.
- Prehistoric Earth: Continent of Blight involves the rescue team being present to rescue T. rex and several other Cretaceous Hell Creek fauna just in time for the infamous asteroid strike, with Drew ending up temporarily marooned in the past after said asteroid strike.
- Welcome To Prehistoric Kingdom: The first chapter, The Horned Hunter, has Nigel return to the Cretaceous to rescue the abelisaur Carnotaurus. Nigel also references the previous times he has gone back to this point in prehistory to rescue dinosaurs from North America.
Films — Animation
- Dinosaur! ends with the asteroid hitting, and shows the catastrophic aftermath - with the carcass of an Edmontosaurus lying in a dead forest, and another starving Edmontosaurus bellowing in anguish over the disintegration of her eggs.
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Knights on Dinosaurs: The movie's climax is set 65 million years ago, when the dinosaur-men army of Enriru teleports themselves to the Cretaceous Era in an attempt to wipe out all mammals and reclaim Earth for the dinosaurs, with Doraemon and the gang being the only ones standing in their way. It was interrupted by the very meteor that triggered the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs, which quickly puts the battle on hold as everyone present in the scene retreats.
- Doraemon: Nobita's New Dinosaur: Most of the film is set in the Cretaceous Era where Doraemon and gang are seeking a new home for Nobita's pets, the dinosaur twins Kyu and Myu. In the finale, a giant meteor hits the Earth in the Yucatan Peninsula where the gang is at, triggering the K-Pg Extinction Event, and the gang must do their best to save the already-existing dinosaur population on the Breeding Diorama Set at all costs.
- Fantasia: The Rite of Spring sequence ends with the dinosaurs all dying out. Since the film was produced more than forty years before the idea of an impact event being the cause was proposed, it shows them all perishing of dehydration in a massive drought.
Films — Live-Action
- 65: Two Human Alien survivors of a spaceship crash find themselves on prehistoric Earth during the time of dinosaurs. But not just any time, they have the incredible misfortune to land on the planet less than one day before the cataclysmic Colony Drop. It's partly justified; they only got stranded on the planet when smaller asteroids, debris surrounding the big one, impacted their ship in outer space. What's a little less justified is that they happened to crash at the exact spot the meteor is also going to crash.
- Dragons: A Fantasy Made Real: The segment about the Prehistoric Dragon ends with them being wiped out along with the dinosaurs by the K-Pg extinction.
Literature
- Animorphs: In Megamorphs #2, the Animorphs accidentally Time Travel to the late Cretaceous and get embroiled in a war between two alien races colonizing the prehistoric Earth, the Mercora and the Nesk. They help the Mercora drive the Nesk off the planet, only for the Nesk to be Sore Losers and deorbit a comet that was going to miss. Tobias realizes this is probably the Chicxulub impactor, and makes Ax sabotage the Mercora attempt to deflect it. The impact then reverses the time travel.
- The Last Dinosaur by Jim Murphy (not to be confused with the movie of the same name) depicts the extinction of the dinosaurs, showing the last herd of Triceratops, which is reduced to just one after an attack by the last Tyrannosaurus. The cause of the extinction was debated at the time of the book's publication (1988), so it elects not to show what specifically happened.
- The Magic School Bus: In the book The Magic School Bus In the Time of the Dinosaurs, the Magic School Bus travels across the different periods of the dinosaurs, from the Triassic to the Jurassic and finally to the Cretaceous. The very last stop before present day is witnessing the falling meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Live-Action TV
- Amazing Dinoworld: The plot of “Survivors: A New Theory” features, of course, the dreaded asteroid, and focuses on a theory that suggests that some non-avian dinosaurs didn’t quickly go extinct, but managed to last for quite a while after the impact.
- Dinosaur Revolution: The last episode depicts the fauna of the Hell Creek Formation in the last few months of the Cretaceous Period. The asteroid hits, killing off almost all the dinosaurs either instantly or in the impact winter that follows. The small silver lining is that the series acknowledges that not all dinosaurs died out; birds survived and continue their legacy to this very day.
- Planet Dinosaur: The end of the last episode depicts the K-Pg extinction event, as well as the aftermath a few months after. Herbivores are dying out due to the ash in the atmosphere making plant growth impossible, but scavenging carnivores are temporarily having a better time because of this. The narration makes it clear this is a short-lived glut though and once all the herbivores die, the carnivores would follow. Interestingly, this is one of the few cases in dinosaur media where the end Cretaceous extinction is NOT depicted in Hell Creek, instead showing the effects in the island of Hateg (modern day Romania).
- The final episode of Planet of Dinosaurs depicts the asteroid impact and its aftermath, a cold, bleak world where the plant life is dying and only a few Triceratops and Tyrannosaurus are left alive, but even they will soon succumb to extinction.
- Prehistoric Park: The first episode has Nigel going back to the late Maastrichtian epoch, only a few days before the asteroid is about to strike because he wants to capture one of the very last Tyrannosaurus to roam the Earth. Because of Rule of Drama, he succeeds in rescuing two juveniles just seconds before the asteroid's blast wipes out the entire region.
- Walking with Dinosaurs: The last episode, "Death of a Dynasty", is about the K-Pg extinction event. The episode begins a few months before the asteroid hits and ends with the extinction of the dinosaurs as the Earth is plunged into darkness by the rain of molten rock and burning ash. However, even before this, it's stated that increased global volcanism have decimated the forest habitats and greatly increased the incidences of stillbirths among dinosaurs, giving the impression the meteor was just the straw that broke the camel's back.
Music
- Lemon Demon: The album Dinosaurchestra is framed by the singer Time Traveling into prehistory to make music with the Dinosaurs. In the final track, they see the meteor in the sky and Face Death with Dignity.
- Nanowar of Steel: "Vegan Velociraptor" ends with the titular hero defeating the Carnivorous Cows and being celebrated for his victory. Then the entire song cuts out as the meteorite hits.
Tabletop Games
- Predation: Grevakc is Earth, 65 million years ago, at the very tail end of the Cretaceous. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, a cataclysm would wipe out almost all life, including the humans who'd travelled through time to get there.
Theme Parks
- Dinosaur: The tour group is secretly sent back by Dr. Seeker to just before the asteroid is about to hit, instead of the Early Cretaceous as planned because he wants to rescue one of the last Iguanodon (which did not live close in time to the asteroid impact in real life). He says that you'll be outta there well before the asteroid enters the atmosphere, but, well...
Video Games
- Dino Run involves you out-running the Advancing Wall of Doom that is debris flying as a result from the asteroid impact.
- E.V.O.: Search for Eden: The Age of Dinosaurs in Chapter 3 closes out with your lifeform quickly jumping through a portal forward through time right before all the dinosaurs are shown being decimated by a swarm of meteors.
- Goodbye Volcano High takes place in an anthropomorphic dinosaur society during the last few months before the asteroid hits, with the characters gradually coming to terms with their imminent extinction. It ends with them putting on a rock concert as the asteroid arrives.
- The plot of Nanosaur is that you were sent back twenty minutes before the asteroid hits to retrieve five dinosaur eggs.
Web Animation
- Dinosauria: "The Last Tyrant" is set in the aftermath of the asteroid impact.
- Kurzgesagt did a minute-by-minute analysis of the K-Pg extinction event in the aptly titled video "The Day the Dinosaurs Died".
- Time Will Tell: William just so happens to finish his time machine one day before the meteor hit, allowing him and Skrapps to escape the extinction.
Western Animation
- 64,000,000 Years Ago ends with the extinction of the dinosaurs (which, despite the title, occurred 66 million years ago, not 64). Because it was produced before it was widely agreed upon that an asteroid did it, it doesn't show or explain how it happened, it just shows every dinosaur dying, leaving only the small mammals behind.
- Back to the Future: In the episode "Forward to the Past", Doc Brown and Verne stop a meteor from hitting to save a dinosaur they befriended, only to find out it was the one that would have triggered the K-Pg extinction, and without it, dinosaurs still rule the earth.
- Subverted in Fairly OddParents. Timmy travels back to the Cretaceous period to get footage of dinosaurs for the movie he's making, and Wanda points to an incoming meteor and notes that it's "the comet that wiped them all out". The meteor lands... and turns out to have been a tiny rock whose impact does nothing.
- Justice League Unlimited: In "The Once and Future Thing, Part 2: Time, Warped", the villain Chronos punishes Chucko, a lackey who betrayed him, by sending him on a one-way trip back to the Cretaceous. Upon arriving, Chucko scares away a Tyrannosaurus and briefly thinks this means he can thrive in this new home—then he looks up and sees an asteroid flying straight towards him. "Oh, phooey."
Chronos: Do any of you know what killed the dinosaurs?
Other goons: Uh... no?
Chronos: Well Chucko does. - The Magic School Bus: Subverted in "The Busasaurus". The episode does showcase the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs, but only in a Rewind Gag where all the fallen trees rise back up and the meteor goes back into outer space. As the time-traveling Magic School Bus finally stops, Ms. Frizzle reveals to the class that they travelled sixty-seven million years into the past, meaning that the class won't be seeing any meteor action for another million years or so.
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003): In "Return of Savanti Part 2", Donnie observes the approaching meteor that will cause the extinction of the dinosaurs in a few months. Though the Turtles and Renet stay in the past long enough for extinction to be only a month away, thankfully they get out in time.
- Tiny Toons Looniversity: In "Tears of a Clone, Buster's evil clone meets his end by being sent back in time to the end of the Cretaceous Period, when the asteroid had hit.
- Toy Story Treats: Lampshaded when the toys watch a dinosaur documentary, with Rex hoping for a happy ending. As Hamm gleefully notes, the asteroid arrives to end the special and the dinosaurs with it.
- When Dinosaurs Roamed America: The last segment depicts Lancian
fauna at the very end of the Late Cretaceous, and ends with the asteroid striking the Earth, sweeping over the landscape with a fiery blast wave and wiping out 70% of all life.
