Dinosaurs would have continued to dominate the Earth had they not been wiped out by an asteroid

Having emerged during the Triassic about 230 million years ago, dinosaurs occupied all continents and were dominant in most terrestrial ecosystems, until they were extinguished by the impact of the asteroid 66 million years ago.

Collecting diverse and up-to-date data, the researchers used statistical analyzes to assess whether the dinosaurs were still capable of producing new species until their untimely demise.

“What we found is that dinosaurs were still dominant, they were still widespread and still doing very well,” Joe Bonsor, first author of the study, said in a statement.

“If the impact with the asteroid never happened, then they may not have gone extinct and would have continued after the Cretaceous,” said Bonsor, a doctoral student at London’s Natural History Museum and the University’s Milner Center for Evolution. of Bath.

Experts believe diversity has been the key to their dominance on Earth, with some boasting armor, crests, teeth, and even feathers.

Previous research had suggested that this diversity was starting to decline and that dinosaurs were starting to lose their dominance.

Researchers from the University of Bath say that, after examining a larger number of dinosaur groups, their more up-to-date and detailed family trees show that dinosaurs on every continent were indeed thriving, with animals feeding on plants such as hadrosaurs. ceratopsians and the dominant ankylosaurs in North America and the carnivorous abelisaurs that continue to thrive in South America.

“The main point of what we’re saying is that we don’t have enough data to know what would have happened to the dinosaurs either way,” Bonsor said.

“Instead we have shown that there is no strong evidence that they are dying, and that the only way to know for sure is to fill in the gaps in the fossil record.”

Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, a paleontologist at Imperial College London who was not involved in the research, told CNN in an email that the study “applies arguably the largest dataset of dinosaur evolutionary trees ever and applies in-depth methods to examine diversification rates towards the end of the Mesozoic. “

“To paraphrase TS Eliot … This is how the dinosaurs ended up, not with a whine but with a bang.”