Dinosaurs And The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Article Date: 23 Jul 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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Dinosaurs were thought to have shown a substantial diversification in their last 50 million years, from the mid-Cretaceous onwards, when new groups such as the duckbilled hadrosaurs, the horned ceratopsians, and many new predators appeared.

This mid-Cretaceous expansion seemed to coincide with the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, the time when modern ecosystems became established on land, with flowering plants, social insects, lizards, snakes, birds and mammals.

A thorough numerical study now shows that this picture is incorrect: dinosaurs had done all their diversifying much earlier in their history, and they did not participate in the Cretaceous explosion of life on land.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences

Proceedings B is the Royal Society's flagship biological research journal, dedicated to the rapid publication and broad dissemination of high-quality research papers, reviews and comment and reply papers. The scope of journal is diverse and is especially strong in organismal biology.

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