A new study 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. Whilst they suffered some species loss, the devastating event helped flowering plants become the dominant type of plant 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 has steered the course of life on Earth profoundly.
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 from fossil evidence alone. Using complex statistical methods, they fitted"birth-death" models to estimate the rates of extinction throughout geological time.
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Nature's great survivors: Flowering plants survived the mass extinction that killed the dinosaursA 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.
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