A new study finds that the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also affected what's on Earth.
“Our team has studied more than 50 thousand.records of fossil pollen and more than 6,000 leaf fossils before and after the impact. We found that cone-shaped plants - conifers and ferns - were common in the area. But only until the moment when the Earth was hit by a huge asteroid, ”the scientists noted.
But after the devastating impact, plant diversity declined by about 45%. When the forests were restored, they were already dominated by angiospheres.
Trilobites had gills attached to their limbs
As a result of this transition, has changed andstructure of tropical forests. In the late Cretaceous period, when dinosaurs were still alive, the trees that made up the forests were spread widely. The tops did not overlap, leaving open areas in the sun near the soil. But after the impact, the forests formed a thick canopy that allowed much less light to hit the ground.
And scientists have three explanations for these changes.Researchers suggest that dinosaurs may have kept the forest from growing too dense. The second explanation is that falling ash from exposure to enriched soils throughout the tropics gave an advantage to faster-growing flowering plants. A third explanation is that the extinction of conifers created an opportunity for flowering plants.
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