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The gargantuan asteroid that snuffed out the dinosaur at the end of theCretaceous period(145 million to 66 million year ago ) left flowers relatively unharmed , and the rosiness thrived in the backwash , a newfangled discipline has found .
Earth fall behind three - quarters of its species , including all non - avian dinosaurs , when an asteroid struck Mexico ’s Yucatán Peninsula66 million year ago . Scientists call this cataclysmic period the Cretaceous - Paleogene ( K - Pg ) mass extinction effect .
While the dinosaur-killing asteroid wiped out many species of flowering plants, the major families — known as angiosperms — survived the mass extinction.
Modern modeling reveals that , despite widespread devastation , the major family of flowering plant , prognosticate flowering plant , were adaptable enough to survive the pestilent event and reap the reinforcement , concord to a study published Sept. 13 in the journalBiology varsity letter .
" After most of Earth ’s species became extinct at K - Pg , flowering plant took the advantage , standardized to the way in which mammals learn over after the dinosaurs , and now pretty much all life on Earth reckon on flower plants ecologically , " study star authorJamie Thompson , a postdoctoral evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath in England , said in astatement .
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Researchers have a hard time identifying flowering plants in the fogy record ; most of the record is made up of isolated leaves that are n’t attached to other plant organs , accord to a 2008 study inThe Paleontological Society Papersjournal . There ’s grounds for inflorescence - plant extinction following the asteroid ten-strike , but not for widespread decay as in other type of organisms .
To see more about how flowering plant respond to the K - Pg extinction event , the authors of the newfangled study looked at major flowering - plant origin previously mapped from DNA mutations of thousands of species .
They used mathematical models to estimate that flowering plants experienced a relatively static extinction pace over meter , with no evidence of a mass extermination . That means that while individual species were lose during the result , the larger family groups survived , according to the study .
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" unfolding plants have a remarkable power to adapt : they employ a variety of seeded player - diffusion and pollination mechanism , some have duplicate their entire genome and others have develop novel ways to photosynthesise , " study Colorado - authorSantiago Ramírez - Barahona , a researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , said in the program line . " This ' flower power ' is what make them nature ’s true survivor . "
