Why didn’t the asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs on Earth also lead to the extinction of all other living species?
In: Planetary Science
Mass extinctions are called mass extinction for a reason. It wipes out most of the species on Earth. About 76% of all species for that extinction, to be exact.
Everything that’s alive today is a descendant from one of the 24% of species that survived. Those survivors would largely be smaller organisms that didn’t need as many resources to survive. The large dinosaurs did not fit that description, but the smaller ones did and became our modern birds.
There have been 5 mass extinction events in Earth’s history, and it only takes a few species to survive to repopulate the Earth. The 2nd one, the Permian-Triassic extinction or “The Great Dying” wiped out 96% of all species, and the dinosaurs then evolved from there to rule the planet for the next few million years. Even then, Triassic, Jurassic, and Cretaceous dinosaurs all look very different because they are all millions of years apart from each other, with many smaller extinctions in between.
Want something that will really blow your mind? Grass likely didn’t evolve until after dinosaurs went extinct.
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