Dr Roger Smith of the South African Museum shows where the dark Permian soil has been overlaid by the reddish post apocalyptic mudstone, that delineates the Permian Extinction event which wiped out 95% of all species 252 million yrs ago. Link.

Edit the mega fauna of the day were not dinosaurs they were called Synapsids, thus they disappeared at the time of the Permian Catastrophe where after evolution got underway again about 10 mill yrs later.

Where after dinosaurs appeared which were themselves wiped out in the Cretaceous Catastrophe which occurred some 66 million years ago, similarly as a result of Solar Flares. Link PDF.

Shots returned to Earth by NASA's Spirit, Opportunity and Curiosity Rovers, provide evidence a similar catastrophic event caused massive loss of life on planet Mars, that the shallow sea that covered much of the planet actually boiled away.

Which must have been caused by an absolute drop in atmospheric pressure .. postulate the same Solar Flares caused catastrophes on both planets.

Earthly creatures that survived the Permian disaster include certain types of marine shellfish, sharks, Bryozoans which are a group of small animals resembling corals, Crinoids relatives of starfishes, Ammonoids including the Chambered Nautilus the Coelacanth also survived. Wiki.

Despite Mars' very shallow seas boiled away completely and its atmosphere vaporized, on Earth the actual period of lessened atmospheric pressure that caused the lakes and rivers and the top layers of sea water to boil off, was fairly short.

Water pressure in the deep seas and in the deepest freshwater lakes and rivers prevented their boiling, while the atmosphere had regained enough pressure to halt the process before the wave of boiling gained the depths. Edit.