New research shows that it was the Chicxulub asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs, creating modern neotropical rainforests like the Amazon. A Science study published in April revealed that tens of thousands of plant fossils and pollen collected from rocks across Colombia have revealed that a collision 66 million years ago caused drastic changes in rainforest plant diversity.
“It’s surprising that the neotropical rainforests we see today are the by-product of one historical accident,” said Carlos Jaramillo, a paleopalinologist who studies ancient plants at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. . (Read also; Save Hundreds of Tarantula in Luggage, 2 German Citizens Arrested by Colombian Airport Officers )
The study’s lead author and Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute paleobotanist Mónica Carvalho found that an asteroid strike wiped out 45 percent of plant species in what is now a neotropical rainforest. During the Cretaceous, the forest in the region was open-canopied, meaning the land was exposed to the sky.
“The plants found in this forest are a mixture of ferns, conifers and flowering plants. This habitat may have been defended, in part, by large plant-eating dinosaurs that trampled or ate undergrowth,” he said. (Read also; Nostradamus’ Doomsday Prediction, Earth Will Be Hit By Asteroids Next Year )
Carvalho added that over millions of years after the impact, new forests with closed canopies slowly emerged. Plants that thrived were flowering plants, with fewer conifers and ferns. Scientists speculate the ash from the collision fell back to the ground thousands of miles away and enriched the soil with nutrients.
This study is not the only one showing how the Chicxulub asteroid impact impacted the entire planet Earth. The impact of the asteroid impact also causes a massive bloom of marine algae because it gets nutrients from asteroid dust that falls into the ocean.
, according to another 2021 study published in June in Geophysical Research Letters. These studies show that widespread extinctions are not the only result of Earth-shaking catastrophes.
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