How the dinosaur mass extinction directly influenced the food we all eat today | indy100

Researchers Say We May Never Find the Birthplace of Dinosaurs

ZMG - Amaze Lab / VideoElephant

Life as we know it changed forever after the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Although you may think it’s sad that we don’t get to see giant creatures roaming around today, it is unlikely that we would have fruit we all know and love.

The extinction event destroyed 76 per cent of all species on Earth, including non-avian dinosaurs, and is linked to a major asteroid impact somewhere in what is now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. It massively changed Earth’s ecosystems and paved the way for mammals becoming diverse, so much so they evolved into humans.

A new study has proposed a theory about how the death of the biggest dinosaurs indirectly created the habitats needed to grow fruit which were also incredibly important for our ancestors. Evidence points to the evolutionary history of fruit and the how the size of their seeds changed over time, suggesting that the dinosaur extinction led to the growth of large fruit that literally fuelled our primate ancestors.

The changing conditions of forests led to differences in seed sizes. The results of the study, published in the journal Paleontology, covers the fall of dinosaurs and the rise of mammals and how certain species influence ecosystems. When Sauropods, long-necked dinosaurs that ate plants, went extinct, forests were able to grow back and the thick tree cover blocked the ground layer (the understory) from getting sunlight.

Scientists have theorised that this created a competition for light in denser forests and taller trees that had to grow faster were more successful. The trees that grew from larger seeds had an upper hand in this race.

Fruit’s evolution is complex and is still not fully known although scientists understand the general evolutionary process. In addition to the sunlight competition, fruits also became larger, and early primates would munch on them and disperse their seeds which helped plants to spread out. Before dinosaurs were wiped out, fruits were scarce and seeds were small. When Sauropods were no longer in the picture, plants evolved and fleshy fruits appeared and enticed animals to eat them and ultimately scatter their seeds.

“At first glance, the darker forest understory caused by dinosaur extinctions may seem unimportant, but it could have directly led to the evolution of our fruit-eating primate ancestors,” said Professor Christopher Doughty of Northern Arizona University who led the study.

Scientists created a model to test this theory and the results replicated seed size trends in the prehistoric era. Interestingly, around 35 million years ago when land animals had become big enough to have similar destructive impacts on forests as dinosaurs, seeds shrunk to smaller sizes.

“Our model predicted these animals would open the forest enough that sufficient light began to enter the understory, and larger seeds were no longer successful over smaller seeds,” said Doughty in a statement. “The evolutionary pressure for seed size to increase began to diminish. Thus, we were able to explain the trends in seed size over time without resorting to external influences such as climate change.”

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