New Report Says Mammals Rise Began Before Dinosaurs Demise
Image courtesy of MSNBC.com One commonly held belief is that dinosaurs became extinct before mammals began to flourish – that the events leading to the mass death of dinosaurs allowed mammals to develop fully. Now a report in the journal Nature – and an accompanying one in Science Magazine – seek to prove otherwise. From Nature: Here we show that in arguably the most evolutionarily successful clade of Mesozoic mammals, the Multituberculata, an adaptive radiation began at least 20 million years before the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs and continued across the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary. Disparity in dental complexity, which relates to…
