“A giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs” is the catch phrase.  The first twist is that we now know “only the non-avian dinosaurs”. Birds evolved from surviving types of dinosaurs. It was the biggest most spectacular dinosaurs that died, and in fact many of the largest were already extinct.

But have you ever wondered “why the dinosaurs, when so many other animals survived?”  Alligators survived, fish survived, mammals survived, even dinosaurs that became birds and other reptiles survived, and even frog species that seem so sensitive to any change in environment survived that meteorite. The common factor was that the biggest ones died and did not reappear either.

So why the largest dinosaurs?  And what is the lesson? These answers after first some background and myth-busting.

While I do literally mean the actual dinosaurs, there is also a lesson in the answer for the metaphoric dinosaurs that big companies can become, and in the knowledge that if all is left to nature, humans will soon follow and suffer the same fate as the bigger dinosaurs.