Because the flowers survived the meteorite that wiped out the dinosaurs

Everyone knows about the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs from planet Earth, which was caused by a meteorite 66 million years ago. However, we are registering survivors. These are plants and flowers: how is this possible? Let us give a scientific explanation for this phenomenon.

It was a fairly recent study that showed that some types of… The plants and flowers appeared unharmed From clashing with meteor CausingDinosaurs became extinct 66 million years ago. On the contrary, the spread and development of part of the flora appears to have been encouraged in its worldwide expansion. A group of scientists questioned this phenomenon and devoted time and resources to understanding what really happened, so that they could provide a scientific explanation for the flowers’ survival in a context that managed to wipe out such a powerful and deep-rooted plant species. Dinosaurs.

Ground study reports are good Five mass extinctions It happened over time. The most famous of them is the one that led to the abolition of dinosaurs, which is scientifically called the Cretaceous-Paleogene period, known as KT happened. The meteorite wiped out 75% of living organisms on the planet. But it seems that flowering plants have benefited from it: here is the explanation that science has attributed to this phenomenon.

Save the flowers, wipe out the dinosaurs: how is this possible?

Finding plant fossils is an almost impossible task, unlike animal fossils. This has made it difficult to reconstruct the evolutionary history of plants. To overcome this problem, scholars and scientists working on this task relied on: DNA of more than 73,000 plant species. Then, using models that went back in time, they were able to think about the past and its development, connecting the pieces of a complex puzzle that then led to a logical solution.

The results obtained show something nothing less than astonishing: it seems clear that the majority of plant species with flowers, belonging to the angiosperm family, date back to Times before the KT disaster happened. This means that the ancestors of plants such as Orchids, magnolia and mint Not only did they share land with dinosaurs, but they also survived the meteorite impact and its disastrous consequences.

How could this be possible? Well, there’s a scientific explanation: plants with flowers reproduce using a specific mechanism Seed dispersal and pollination. This allows them to replicate their entire genome and evolve the way they photosynthesise, always adapting to the new era. Here the environmental catastrophe of the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction did not affect the flowers directly: on the contrary, it allowed them to evolve, allowing them to adapt to the new era, to new natural changes and to evolve until they became the ones we know today, which color our rooms. And our gardens.