The asteroid’s impact, 66 million years ago, probably didn’t just lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs
Photo: SPL / BBC News Brazil
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The impact of an asteroid is known to be the most likely cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but what about the plants?
A study carried out in Panama, with samples taken in Colombia, points out that the event gave rise to the tropical forests that we know today on our planet.
The researchers used pollen and fossilized leaves from Colombian soil to investigate how the meteor’s impact changed the rainforests of South America.
After a 12 km wide space rock hit Earth 66 million years ago, the type of vegetation that formed these forests has changed dramatically.
Mónica Carvalho, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama and co-author of the study, said: “Our team examined more than 50,000 fossil pollen records and more than 6,000 leaf fossils before and after impact.”
The team described their findings in the prestigious science journal Science.
Discoveries
Scientists found that coniferous plants and ferns were common before the huge asteroid hit Earth, where it is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.
But after the devastating event, plant diversity dropped by about 45% and extinctions spread, especially among seed plants.
Forests recovered over the next 6 million years, but angiosperms, or flowering plants, came to dominate these areas of vegetation.
The structure of tropical forests has also changed as a result of this transition.