Jakarta –
Around 66 million years ago, the massive crash of an asteroid ended its reign dinosaur as the most dominant creature on Planet Earth. However, in a recent study, dinosaurs are thought to have been threatened before the asteroid hit.
Researchers analyzed the evolutionary trends of six groups of dinosaurs, finding that both herbivores and carnivores were already threatened with mass extinction about 10 million years before the asteroid impact.
“We found that dinosaur diversity decreased from 76 million years ago,” said lead researcher Fabien Condamine of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS). detikINET from Live Science, Saturday (3/7/2021).
In their investigation, they listed more than 1,600 dinosaur fossils from six groups. In their modeling, there was a decrease in the species diversity of the six dinosaur families.
Some declined more rapidly than others, such as the herbivorous dinosaurs which declined in number in the 10 million years leading up to the end of the dinosaur age. There is also a slight decrease in number, namely dinosaur troodontids that are shaped like birds.
There are several possible explanations for the decline, such as difficulty adapting to climate change. On the other hand, new species of dinosaurs did not appear.
At the end of the Cretaceous, there was a temperature drop of up to 7 degrees Celsius in the north Atlantic region. When the weather got colder, maybe the herbivorous dinosaurs were not able to adapt, which led to a decline in numbers.
As the number of herbivorous dinosaurs dwindled, so did the carnovorous dinosaurs because they ate the herbivores. “Herbivores are key species in the ecosystem and their disappearance has led to the decline of carnivores,” said Fabien.
But of course this research is a theory and can be debated by other research. It could be that there is a decrease in diversity, but that doesn’t mean it threatens sustainability dinosaur. In other words, even if there were no asteroid strikes, it is likely that dinosaurs would have existed for a long time despite the decline in numbers.
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(fyk / fay)
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