TRIBUNNEWIKI.COM – Study results show that the dinosaurs were close to extinction before a large asteroid hit Earth some 66 million years ago.
The study was led by researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In the study, they examined more than 1,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs and eggshells. They found that dinosaur diversity had decreased when the Earth was hit by an asteroid.
Quoted by News week(7/10/2022), the results of that study were published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Paleontologists have long debated whether dinosaurs entered a period of decline or a heyday when the asteroid disaster occurred.
Researchers conducted a study of dinosaur eggs in the Shanyang Valley of central China. There they found only three species in the 1,000 eggs found. According to them, the reduced species diversity indicates that dinosaurs are already vulnerable to extinction.
Two of the three species belong to a type of toothless dinosaur called oviraptor. The other species was a duck-billed dinosaur called hadrosaur that ate plants.
Some fossil bones were also found among the eggs. This suggests that tyrannosaurs and sauropods also lived there 66.4 to 68.2 years ago.
Researchers believe that the decline in dinosaur diversity could be due to global climate fluctuations and large volcanic eruptions.
Eruptions in Deccan Traps, one of the largest volcanic systems on Earth, and other mountains can cause widespread ecosystem instability. This threatens the mass extinction of dinosaurs that do not belong to the bird group. Today birds are the only descendants of dinosaurs.
“Our results indicate low dinosaur diversity over the last two million years of the Cretaceous era, and the data indicate a decline in dinosaur diversity millions of years before the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary,” said lead author Fei Han. of study.
“Major catastrophic events at the end of the Cretaceous period, such as the Deccan traps and asteroid collisions, may have impacted already vulnerable ecosystems and led to the extinction of non-bird dinosaurs,” he explains.
With the eggs, scientists also created a timeline two million years before the asteroid’s catastrophe at the end of the Cretaceous period. The timeline allows for details every 100,000 years. They also compare it with world data.
The results of the study are in agreement with data taken in North America. Both suggest that the dinosaurs were indeed nearing extinction around the world prior to the asteroid impact.
(Tribunnewswiki)
