16 May 2009

Some dinosaurs may have survived the K-T event

An isolated group of dinosaurs somehow survived the catastrophic event that wiped out most of their kind some 65.5 million years ago, a new study suggests.

Dinosaurs of this "lost world," in a remote region of the U.S. West, may have outlived their doomed relatives by as much as half a million years…

the bones of hadrosaurs, tyrannosaurs, anklyosaurs, and several other species were found together in a sandstone formation that dates to the Paleocene epoch—the time period after the so-called Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event…

...can't explain why dinosaurs may have survived longer in some areas but not others. "One guess is that the survivors lived in the northernmost parts of North America, at the greatest distance from the impact site, and then migrated south..."
Perhaps they were in Minnesota! Other scientists have doubts -
After previous "survivor" finds, it was determined that the dinosaurs in question, initially entombed in sand or mud, had their bones exposed again later by natural forces such as river erosion. The bones were then redeposited in younger rock layers, making them appear to belong to an earlier era.

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