It has long been debated whether dinosaurs were abruptly wiped out by the impact of an asteroid that fell to Earth around 66 million years ago, or whether these reptiles were already in decline before the fatal collision. A study published in the magazine “Science” discovered that “dinosaurs were not in decline before this event” and that “it was actually the asteroid that wiped them out” completely from the face of the planet, except for birds (close relatives of dinosaurs).
A group of researchers led by Andrew Flynn, from New Mexico State University, concluded that, at least in North America, and according to the fossil records analyzed, these animals “maintained high diversity” during the end of the Cretaceous period — known as the “Age of Dinosaurs” — and the beginning of the Paleogene period. This “suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and divided into regionally distinct assemblages during the last few hundred thousand years before the asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous,” says the article.
By dating a rock formation in New Mexico, the authors concluded that the animals were thriving until, one day, they disappeared completely. The debate over the eventual decline and mass extinction of dinosaurs “has been ongoing for decades, largely because there are few fossil sites dating from this specific period outside of the northern plains of North America, which can only tell part of the story.” In other words, the few geological records and fossils that exist are mainly from northern North America and document “an apparently abrupt extinction” of the species. “However, it is not known for sure whether this is a local, regional, or global pattern.”
Researchers even believe that the group of reptiles would not have become extinct if it were not for the catastrophic collision of a huge space rock. “The most iconic mass extinction in Earth’s history occurred on the border between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, approximately 66 million years ago, when rapid environmental destruction led to the death of around 75% of species, the most famous being non-avian dinosaurs”, they further explain, in the study entitled “New Mexico Dinosaurs That Survived Lately Illuminate the Diversity and Provinciality of the Late of the Cretaceous”.
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