Science

13259 readers

40 users here now

Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

103

New 'Chicken from Hell' Discovered — A newly identified “chicken from hell” species suggests dinosaurs weren’t sliding toward extinction before the fateful asteroid hit (www.scientificamerican.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Archived https://archive.ph/vXdsf

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Layman here, but as I recall there is a more recent theory that the evolution of flowering plants (130ish MYA) played a role in the decreasing diversity of the huge dinosaurs.

The usual evidence used for that is that the Triceratops like species seem to end up with just the one, and Trex appeared to be the only large predator in its ecosystems.

Although I understand there is new evidence suggesting that the North American Trex specimens found might be at least three different subspecies.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If I remember correctly, those two species were actually separated by millions of years.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, that doesn't change my point. In both cases it looks like the ecosystem had multiple niches that in the fossil record previously having different species apparently all filled with a single species. With Trex, one of the current theories is that it filled different niches as it grew up.

Although with Trex, there may have been a half sized version that was hunting alongside the big one(s).