A sweeping review of the fossil record has shed new light on the mysterious final years of the dinosaurs, showing that they were thriving right up to the moment an asteroid strike doomed them to extinction.
The question of how well the dinosaurs were faring just before they vanished some 66 million years ago has been disputed for decades.
It is now widely accepted that a devastating asteroid impact sealed their fate, but did this hunk of space rock merely provide a coup de grâce? Dinosaurs, some researchers have argued, had already slumped into a period of long-term decline.
Mammals were more flexible and rapidly became more diverse
ILLUSTRATION BY HENRY SHARPE
The new study, the most comprehensive yet, reaches a different conclusion: that they were cut down in their prime.
An analysis of hundreds of fossils