It’s already clear. Scientists have discovered what is really responsible for the extinction of dinosaurs

Until their day of judgment came, when an asteroid hit Earth at the end of the Late Cretaceous 66 million years ago. Some scientists believe that at that time their species was already in decline and heading for extinction anyway. Researchers at the British University of Bath now hope to put this theory on ice for good.

In collecting and statistically analyzing all the most current data available, they concluded that if it weren’t for the asteroid, the dinosaurs would have survived on the planet long after the end of the geological period with the romantic name of chalk. Among other things, it would also mean that mammals and then humans would enter the scene.

Dominant and successful

“We found that dinosaurs were still dominant, most widespread and successful on Earth just before they became extinct,” said CNN’s lead author Joe Bonsor. Although previous research has suggested that species diversity, reproductive capacity, and loss of dominance have declined over time, a new study published in The Royal Society of Open Science suggests otherwise. Dinosaurs, on the other hand, flourished. On all continents. Even herbivorous hadrosaurs and ceratops in North America as well as carnivorous abelisurs in South.

According to Bath scientists, the revolutionary interpretation of fossil records was made on the basis of updating and supplementing the already compiled pedigrees of these reptiles.

“Simply put, there is not enough evidence now to show that the dinosaurs were extinct before the asteroid hit. And that the gaps in the fossil record cannot be interpreted as an artificial decline in the rate of species diversity. If we wanted to prove it, we would have to fill these gaps in the fossil record in a fundamental way, “Bonsor continued.

Alfia Alessandro Chiarenza, a paleontologist at Imperial College London, was amazed by the work of Bath scientists. “Their study works with the largest set of dinosaur evolutionary trees ever available, and their methods for monitoring the degree of diversification until the end of the Mesozoic are thorough,” the paleontologist said. The truth, however, is that dinosaurs may no longer care about these disputations.

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