Nature Communications (Jun 2021)

Dinosaur biodiversity declined well before the asteroid impact, influenced by ecological and environmental pressures

  • Fabien L. Condamine,
  • Guillaume Guinot,
  • Michael J. Benton,
  • Philip J. Currie

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-23754-0
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12, no. 1
pp. 1 – 16

Abstract

Read online

Dinosaurs are thought to have been driven extinct by an asteroid impact 66 million years ago. Here, Condamine et al. show that six major dinosaur families were already in decline in the preceding 10 million years, possibly due to global cooling and competition among herbivores.