Themass defunctness eventthat killed the dinosaurs is thought to have wiped out nearly 75 percent of all animal coinage alive at the time . The same is not true for the plant species , however , as new enquiry paint a picture that the Cretaceous - Palaeogene extinction result ( K - Pg ) , while pass over out local works species , did not have the same wallop on major florescence plant blood line .
“ It ’s just bizarre to call up that flowering plant life make it K - Pg when dinosaurs did n’t , ” Dr Jamie Thompson , an evolutionary biologist at the University of Bath and first author of the cogitation , told theNew York Times .
efflorescence plants , make out as angiosperms , aredifficult to keep course ofthroughout story because they do not fossilize as well as the skeletons of animal coinage . To make this discovery , the investigator analyzed the evolutionary Tree of up to 73,000 living species of angiosperms . Birth - death theoretical account were then fitted to estimate the rates of quenching throughout that time scale .
" After most of Earth ’s species became extinct at K - Pg , flowering plant took the advantage , similar to the way in which mammals took over after the dinosaur , and now pretty much all sprightliness on Earth depend on flower plants ecologically , " Thompson said in astatement .
The squad found that though some coinage did go away in the experimental extinction , the family and orders to which these metal money belonged negociate to live on . What ’s more , angiosperm began to command . The squad hint that these major Holy Order rise around the clip of the dinosaur , survive the K - Pg , and then get toflourishduring the Palaeocene .
The ancestors of pop and well - known species , likemint , magnolia , andorchids , would have all been alive at the same time as the dinosaurs , but managed to persist after the extinguishing event . Today angiosperms represent approximately 78 percent of all terrestrial works species .
While coniferous tree , fishes , and the non - avian dinosaur suffered losses in their major orders and ancestry , flowering plant continued to thrive . This may in part be due to their adaptations for pollination including steer dispersal and insect pollination method acting .
Co - generator Dr Santiago Ramírez - Barahona sound out : " anthesis plant life have a singular ability to adjust : they use a variety of seed - dispersal and pollination mechanism , some have duplicate their entire genomes and others have evolved new ways to photosynthesise . This ' flower big businessman ' is what make them nature ’s true survivors . "
The paper is published inBiology Letters .
