Study says dinosaurs were already headed for extinction when the asteroid hit
The dinosaur extinction event that happened some 66 million years ago has been studied from many angles. We know a lot about the devastating effects of the huge alien rock that might have originated from the edge of our solar system. The asteroid that struck Mexico was as strong as 10 billion atomic bombs. Scientists believe the impact sparked undersea volcanoes. On top of that, the asteroid might have sent enormous amounts of sulfur into the atmosphere, which sent the planet into an ice age too cold for the dinosaurs. And it all happened by mistake. Had the asteroid struck a different region on Earth, the dinosaurs might still be alive.
But a brand new paper indicates that cataclysmic asteroid impact or not, the dinosaur extinction might have been a foregone conclusion.
A brand new study from Nature Communications suggests that the dinosaurs might have been in decline for some 10 million years before the asteroid hit Mexico, CNN reports.
The new data
The researchers analyzed 1,600 dinosaur fossils from 247 species. They studied the diversity and extinction rates for six dinosaur families.
“We looked at the six most abundant dinosaur families through the whole of the Cretaceous (period), spanning from 150 to 66 million years ago, and found that they were all evolving and expanding and clearly being successful,” Fabien Condamine said in a statement. The scientist, from the Institut des Sciences de l’Evolution de Montpellier in France, is the study’s lead author.
