European Dinosaurs Were Wiped Out Rapidly 66 Million Years Ago

Dinosaurs once ranged across Europe, thriving in warmer conditions than today. Now, researchers have found new evidence that after an asteroid slammed into Earth about 66 million years ago, these dinosaurs were wiped off the face of the map.

The theory that an asteroid rapidly killed off the dinosaurs is widely recognized. Yet until recently, dinosaur fossils from the late Cretaceous, which was the final stage of dinosaur evolution, were almost exclusively from North America. This raised question as to whether the sudden decline of dinosaurs in the American and Canadian west was merely a local story rather than a global event.

Now, researchers have discovered evidence in Europe. The scientists synthesized research on European dinosaurs over the past two decades, including fossils of late Cretaceous dinosaurs from Spain, France, Romania and other countries.

"For a long time, Europe was overshadowed by other continents when the understanding of the nature, composition and evolution of latest Cretaceous continental ecosystems was concerned," said Zoltan Csiki-Sava, one of the researchers, in a news release. "The last 25 years witnessed a huge effort across all Europe to improve our knowledge, and now we are on the brink of fathoming the significance of these new discoveries, and of the strange and new story they tell about life at the end of the Dinosaur Era."

The researchers examined the variety and ages of these fossils. This revealed that the dinosaurs remained diverse in European ecosystems very late into the Cretaceous. In fact, both meat and plant-eating species are present and flourishing in the final few hundred thousand years before the asteroid hit.

"Everyone knows that an asteroid hit 66 million years ago and dinosaurs disappeared, but this story is mostly based on fossils from one part of the world, North America," said Steve Brusatte, one of the researchers. "We now know that European dinosaurs were thriving up to the asteroid impact, just like in North America. This is strong evidence that the asteroid really did kill off dinosaurs in their prime, all over the world at once."

The findings are published in the journal ZooKeys.

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