Asteroid That Wiped Out Dinosaurs May Have Given Birth To The Iconic Amazon Rainforest

When asteroid slammed the Yucat¨¢n peninsula in what is now Mexico, 66 million years ago, it is said to have wiped out dinosaurs, in addition to 75% of the total plants and animals.

While it may have caused mayhem, the event was responsible for the emergence of the iconic Amazon rain forest of South America, the most spectacularly diverse environment on the planet, a new study said.

Representational Image/Pixabay

The paper titled Extinction at the end-Cretaceous and the origin of modern Neotropical rainforests, published in the Science journal this month, suggests that the origin of modern rainforests can be traced to the immediate aftermath of the asteroid strike.

Researchers analyzed tens of thousands of fossils of pollen, spores and leaves, collected from various sites across Colombia, that were dated to between 70 million and 56 million years ago.

Also read: Dinosaurs Would Rule Earth Today If Not For The Asteroid That Wiped Them Out: Study

Pexels

The study suggests the end of the Cretaceous was a real turning point in the structure and composition of this environment.

¡°A single historical accident changed the ecological and evolutionary trajectory of tropical rainforests,¡± says Carlos Jaramillo, a paleopalynologist and co-lead author of the study.

¡°The forests that we have today are really the by-product of what happened 66 million years ago," he added.

Also read: The Biggest Asteroids That Passed Between The Earth And The Moon In The Last Few Years

Reuters

But after the devastating impact, plant diversity declined by roughly 45% and extinctions were widespread, particularly among seed-bearing plants.

While the forests recovered over the next six million years, angiosperms, or flowering plants, came to dominate them.

It took millions of years for the diversity of the forest to recover after the mass extinction event, which ¡°should be a clear warning against deforestation and the rate at which we are currently intervening on the planet,¡± says M¨®nica Carvalho, co-lead study author of the study.

Also read: If Earth Is Ever Hit By An Asteroid, Only Mushrooms Can Save Us From Going Extinct