A new study published in Biology Letters by researchers from the University of Bath (UK) and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Mexico) shows that flowering plants escaped relatively unscathed from the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. While they suffered some species loss, the devastating event helped flowering plants become the dominant type of plant they are today.
by researchers from the University of Bath and Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México shows that flowering plants escaped relatively unscathed from the mass extinction that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. While they suffered some species loss, the devastating event helped flowering plants become the dominant type of plant they are today.
There have been several mass extinctions in the Earth's history, the most famous caused by an asteroid hit 66 million years ago, which steered the course of life on Earth profoundly. The Cretaceous-Paleogene eradicated at least 75% of all species on Earth, including the dinosaurs, but until now it has been unclear what kind of impact it had on flowering plants.
Plants do not have skeletons or exoskeletons like most animals, meaning fossils are relatively rare compared to animals, making it very difficult to understand the timeline of evolution fromDr. Jamie Thompson of the Milner Centre for Evolution and Dr. Santiago Ramírez-Barahona of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México analyzed evolutionary"trees" constructed from mutations in the DNA sequences of up to 73,000 living species of flowering plants .
Using complex statistical methods, they fitted"birth-death" models to estimate the rates of extinction throughout geological time.
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