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  • Dinosaur diversity before the asteroid

    From Pandora@pandora@knoware.nl to sci.bio.paleontology on Fri Oct 24 13:55:30 2025
    From Newsgroup: sci.bio.paleontology

    Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous
    diversity and provinciality

    Abstract

    It has long been debated whether non-avian dinosaurs went extinct
    abruptly or gradually at the end-Cretaceous (66 million years ago),
    because their fossil record at this time is mostly limited to northern
    North America. We constrain a dinosaur-rich unit to the south, the
    Naashoibito Member in New Mexico, to the very latest Cretaceous (~66.4
    to 66.0 million years), preserving some of the last-known non-avian
    dinosaurs. Ecological modeling shows that North American terrestrial vertebrates maintained high diversity and endemism in the latest
    Cretaceous and early Paleogene, with bioprovinces shaped by temperature
    and geography. This counters the notion of a low-diversity
    cross-continental fauna and suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and partitioned into regionally distinct assemblages during the final few
    hundred thousand years before the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact.

    Open access:
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw3282

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb5725
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  • From John Harshman@john.harshman@gmail.com to sci.bio.paleontology on Fri Oct 24 06:29:40 2025
    From Newsgroup: sci.bio.paleontology

    On 10/24/25 4:55 AM, Pandora wrote:
    Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous diversity and provinciality

    Abstract

    It has long been debated whether non-avian dinosaurs went extinct
    abruptly or gradually at the end-Cretaceous (66 million years ago),
    because their fossil record at this time is mostly limited to northern
    North America. We constrain a dinosaur-rich unit to the south, the Naashoibito Member in New Mexico, to the very latest Cretaceous (~66.4
    to 66.0 million years), preserving some of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs. Ecological modeling shows that North American terrestrial vertebrates maintained high diversity and endemism in the latest
    Cretaceous and early Paleogene, with bioprovinces shaped by temperature
    and geography. This counters the notion of a low-diversity
    cross-continental fauna and suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and partitioned into regionally distinct assemblages during the final few hundred thousand years before the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact.

    Open access:
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw3282

    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aeb5725

    Getting some press.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/10/23/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid/

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