According to paleontologists, if it were not for the bolide

1. Eliminate options A and B because the clause of condition uses the Past Subjunctive (WERE), and this use refers to a hypothetical present or future. Nevertheless, the sentence clearly wants to talk about a hypothetical past: a past that might not have happened, but did happen: the sentence imagines a past in which the bolide did not strike the Earth.

2. Thus, the Past Perfect is required to hypothesize a past different from the one that occurred. Options C, D, and E use it and so are candidates in this regard. Nonetheless, option E begins with the clause Had the bolide not struck the Earth ... But which bolide is THE BOLIDE? It is unclear what the sentence is talking about, so this option can be eliminated. (Furthermore, 2 million times more energy compared to the most powerful nuclear bomb ... compares ENERGY with NUCLEAR BOMB: this is hardly an effective comparison.)

3. Options C and D begin logically with the clause Had it not been for the bolide that ... thus leading into a description of the bolide that tells us which one it was: the one that struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour, and so on. Option D, however, uses the Conditional Simple in the clause of result (WOULD LIVE). This suggests that in a hypothetical present the dinosaurs might live: clearly, this makes no sense. The sentence is trying to imagine a past in which the dinosaurs could have continued living long beyond the time at which they actually became extinct.

4. What is required is the Conditional Perfect (WOULD HAVE LIVED) to refer to this imaginary time: thus, option C is the correct answer.

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According to paleontologists,

• had it not been for the bolide that
  • struck the Earth at 40,000 miles per hour and
    released 2 million times more energy than that of the most powerful nuclear bomb ever detonated,
  the dinosaurs would have lived much longer on this planet.

From the sentence above as in option C, it appears that bolide does 2 actions. first it strikes the earth and second it the releases energy.
is this not a meaning error?
Since I feel it is not bolide which releases energy but the collision.

Clearly, it is the collision that releases energy - the collision of the bolide with the Earth. That collision is alluded to in the verb STRUCK. It would be redundant to say something like The bolide stuck the Earth, causing a collision.

Look at this example:

The stone hit the surface of the water and raised a splash.

There is no need to specify that the collision of the stone with the water raised the splash. Something that HITS or STRIKES automatically collides with something else: the notion of collision inheres in the verb.

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