Paris:
Dinosaurs may possibly have been in decline millions of years just before the meteor strike normally attributed to their extinction, according to study published Tuesday examining the part played by altering climate.
The Chicxulub meteor, which slammed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula about 66 million years ago, is believed to have led to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction occasion that killed off 3 quarters of life on Earth — dinosaurs incorporated.
Now new study suggests that a quantity of species of the terrible lizards may possibly have been declining up to 10 million years just before the meteor strike.
Research published in the journal Nature examined information from 1600 dinosaur remains discovered across the planet to model how typical specific species of carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs had been in the late Cretaceous.
The group discovered that species decline started about 76 million years ago.
Fabien Condamine, from the University of Montpellier’s Institute of Evolutionary Science and lead study author, mentioned his group had followed the decline of six households of dinosaur, comprising practically 250 distinct species.
“We have a peak in diversity around 76 million years ago,” he told AFP.
“Then there’s a decline that lasts 10 million years — that’s more than the entire duration of the Homo genus.”
The group discovered two probable explanations for the falling dinosaur diversity identified in the fossil records and their personal computer system modelling.
For one, the pace of the species decline corresponded with a robust cooling of the worldwide climate about 75 million years ago, when temperatures fell up to eight degrees Celsius.
Condamine mentioned that dinosaurs had been adapted to a mesothermal climate — predominantly warm and damp — that had prevailed for tens of millions of years all through their time on Earth.
“With strong cooling, like other large animals, they likely weren’t able to adapt,” he mentioned.
The second probable decline explanation came as a thing of shock to the group.
Whereas each herbivores and carnivores would have been anticipated to be impacted at roughly the exact same time, the group discovered a two-million year lag amongst their respective declines.
“So the decline of the herbivores, which were the prey, would therefore have cascaded into a decline in meat-eaters,” mentioned Condamine.
The study concluded that not only did a cooling climate and lowered diversity amongst herbivores lead to the dinosaurs’ slow decline, it also left the different species unable to recover following the meteor strike.
“These factors impeded their recovery from the final catastrophic event,” it mentioned.
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