The dinosaurs were extinct due to a combination factors. A recent study which was published in the scientific journal Biological Reviews postulates that prehistoric animals could have survived if the asteroid hit Earth millions of years earlier or later. The asteroid had hit Earth at a time when the planet was undergoing extreme upheavals and the Dinosaurs were extremely vulnerable.
The Earth was under a state of dynamic flux and the asteroid hit at a time when the animals in this case dinosaur were extremely vulnerable. If the asteroid had hit the planet a bit earlier or later, the dinosaurs could have escaped extinction.
A team of researchers have concluded that the Dinosaurs were a victim of unprecedented bad luck. A 6.2 mile brute of an asteroid had hit in a spot which is much of today’s Mexico when the Dinosaurs reigned supreme on Earth. The period was also wracked by a series of extreme volcanic eruptions, drastic changes in sea levels and major shifts in temperature which caused environmental changes of gargantuan proportion.
Paleontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh told the Daily News,”I think there is a perception that the asteroid hit an idyllic ‘lost world’ of dinosaurs, but it hit a world that was in flux.”
The environmental changes led to a drastic change in the diversity of herbivorous dinosaurs which in turn were eaten by the carnivorous dinosaurs. The food chain of was disturbed and the carnivorous dinosaurs were most affected.
Brusatte added, “It made their food webs more vulnerable to collapse, so it made dinosaurs more susceptible when the asteroid hit. So maybe if the asteroid hit a few million years earlier it wouldn’t have been so devastating.”
The Food chain collapse had eradicated one group of Dinosaur after another. Only the flying dinosaurs survived and evolved into modern-day birds, according to the scientists. The findings has been published in the scientific journal Biological Reviews.
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