The dinosaur-killing asteroid reshaped Earth's tropical forests

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That doomsday asteroid hit earth 66 million years ago and triggered a major extinction event! When will earth be hit again? Global Warming is a hoax! Climate Change is a religion!

"... Then the bolide hit and everything changed. That impact not only set off a massive extinction event that wiped out more than 75 percent of life on Earth, but it also redefined Earth’s tropical rainforests, transforming them from sun-dappled, open-canopied forests into the dark, dense, lush, dripping forests of today’s Amazon ...

The researchers analyzed tens of thousands of fossils of pollen, spores and leaves, collected from 39 sites across Colombia, that were dated to between 70 million and 56 million years ago.  The team then assessed overall forest plant diversity, dominant species and insect-plant interactions, and tracked how these factors shifted. Plant diversity declined by 45 percent in the immediate aftermath of the asteroid strike, the researchers found, and it took 6 million years before the rich diversity of the tropical rainforest rebounded. Even then, the forests were never the same.

“A single historical accident changed the ecological and evolutionary trajectory of tropical rainforests,” ..."

"... Extinctions were widespread, especially among gymnosperms. Angiosperm taxa came to dominate the forests over the 6 million years of recovery, when the flora began to resemble that of modern lowland neotropical forest. The leaf data also imply that the forest canopy evolved from relatively open to closed and layered, leading to increased vertical stratification and a greater diversity of plant growth forms. ..."

The dinosaur-killing asteroid reshaped Earth's tropical forests | Science News Sun-laden, open-canopied forests were transformed into the dark, dense ones seen today

Here is the link to the underlying research article:

Extinction at the end-Cretaceous and the origin of modern Neotropical rainforests