While it’s generally established that dinosaurs went extinct as a result of an asteroid strike about 66 million years ago, scientists have debated about whether…
While it’s generally established that dinosaurs went extinct as a result of an asteroid strike about 66 million years ago, scientists have debated about whether the creatures were still thriving in the lead-up to the extinction event, or already on the decline due to millions of years of climate change. A new paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications appears to back up the former theory.
As summarized by Phys.org, the researchers behind the new study concluded that, based on analysis of species distribution and environmental changes in North America around the time of the dinosaurs’ extinction, there’s a good chance the creatures were not in a state of decline at the time of the asteroid impact. In a statement quoted by the outlet, Imperial College London doctoral student and study lead author Alessandro Chiarenza explained that dinosaurs might have been quite resilient despite the threat of climate change, contrary to what some prior studies had suggested.
