The Death of the Dinosaurs

"The Death of the Dinosaur" probes one of the most perplexing questions in all of science. With an unrivaled record of world domination lasting over 140 million years, how was it that these marvelously adaptable, highly diversified creatures could become extinct? Beginning in 1980, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Luis Alvarez and his son set out to prove that a massive comet or meteor was to blame. Other scientists disagree, citing such alternative scenarios as violent dinosaur disease. Whatever the answer, the mass extinction of dinosaurs did occur--and left a world ripe for habitation by a small, shrew-like mammal that would one day evolve into a new world-conquering species: homo sapiens.