Re: Did dinosaurs die from a meteorite impact or volcanism? -- AMIGA Astronomy

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Subject: Re: Did dinosaurs die from a meteorite impact or volcanism?

Author:
Blobrana

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Date Posted: 09:29:52 11/19/04 Fri
In reply to: Blobrana 's message, "Re: Did dinosaurs die from a meteorite impact or volcanism?" on 01:12:33 11/06/04 Sat

November 19th:

When dinosaurs became extinct, there were more varieties of the reptiles living than ever before, according to a new analysis of global fossil records by a team of researchers from the University of Rhode Island.

�Our analysis finally lays to rest the old, utterly unsupported idea that dinosaurs were declining in diversity during the last 10 million years of their time on Earth�

Only 40 known genera of dinosaurs comprised the fauna of the late Triassic period, with diversity increasing until the Cretaceous period - 99 to 65 million years ago - when at least 245 dinosaur genera were to be found.

"Dinosaur diversity was increasing logarithmically throughout their 160 million years on Earth,"
"Their increasing diversity seems to have been fuelled by the evolution of new innovations that allowed them to explore new habitat."

According to palaeontologists, early dinosaurs tended to be unspecialised, but during the late Cretaceous period they became much more specialized in their feeding and behaviour patterns, driving their evolution into more diversification.
The diversity of plant-eating dinosaurs in the Cretaceous was found to be especially high.
Earlier studies, based almost entirely on North American dinosaur records, suggested a drop in dinosaur diversity in the 10 million years leading up to their extinction.
However, analysis of a new database of global dinosaur records, that now includes new fossils unearthed in Asia and South America, shows that the diversity of dinosaur genera did not decrease .

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Replies:

Subject	Author	Date
Re: Did dinosaurs die from a meteorite impact or volcanism?	Blobrana	09:36:12 11/19/04 Fri
Re: Did dinosaurs die from a meteorite impact or volcanism? -- Jan, 21:59:32 05/31/05 Tue