How did the dinosaurs evolve?

How did man evolve after the extinction of the dinosaurs?

• Answer:

  Humans are mammals; the earliest mammal fossils date from 165 million years ago - so roughly in the middle of the "age of the dinosaurs". The actual "earliest" mammal is a variation on the "chicken and egg" question; the 165 million year old fossil is known as a proto-mammal - having some of the characteristics. The full story of *how* man evolved after the the extinction of the dinosaurs is, of course, enormously complicated, but in it's basics, mammals survived the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous (one suggestion is that the end of the Cretaceous was caused by the Earth cooling and the small, furry mammals were less likely to be killed by the colder weather). How man evolved from the small, shrew like mammals that survived is really the story of the evolution of any species; in a hostile environment, some members of a community will survive to breed and some won't. Characteristics of those that survive will get passed down to their offspring, eventually the offspring will be so different from their ancestors that they will become a different species.