The dinosaurs weren’t exiting before the asteroid hit, the study says

A new analysis has refuted the claim that dinosaurs were in decline at the time of their extinction.

If an asteroid hadn’t hit Earth 66 million years ago, dinosaurs could have continued to dominate the planet, according to new research.

A team from the University of Bath and the UK’s National History Museum published a study at the Royal Society Open Science stating that, contrary to some scientific opinion, dinosaurs were not in a state of decline prior to the mass extinction event. .

The team collected a number of different dinosaur family trees and used statistical models to assess whether each of the major dinosaur groups were still capable of producing new species at this time. Before the impact of asteroids during the late Cretaceous, dinosaurs were widespread globally and were the dominant animal form of most terrestrial ecosystems.

‘It’s not as simple as looking at some trees’

“Previous studies by others have used various methods to draw the conclusion that dinosaurs would still be dead, as they were in decline towards the end of the Cretaceous period,” said the study’s first author, Joe Bonsor.

“However, we show that if you expand the dataset to include newer dinosaur family trees and a wider range of dinosaur types, the results don’t really all point to this conclusion – in fact, only about half of them do. . “

The statistical methods used by the team were designed to help overcome gaps in the fossil record caused by a number of factors. This included which bones are preserved as fossils, how accessible they are, and the places where paleontologists look for them.

“The main point of our article is that it’s not as simple as looking at some trees and making a decision,” added Bonsor.

“The big inevitable bias in the fossil record and lack of data can often show species decline, but this may not be a reflection of reality at the time. Our data currently do not show that they were in decline, in fact some groups such as hadrosaurs and ceratopsians were thriving and there is no evidence to suggest they would have died 66 million years ago if the extinction event had not occurred. “