Re: [dinosaur] Would non-avian dinosaur survive through the whole Cenozoic?

Ben Creisler

There have been a number of studies in recent years based on small theropod and bird teeth from the end of the Cretaceous that show that new types were continuing to evolve right up to the end of the Maastrichtian.Â Small, nimble, adaptable theropods probably would have done just fine without the impact, given that they lived in polar regions and probably in places such as mountains and forests where fossilization would not easily happen, plus surviving birds radiated after the extinction into flightless forms that probably filled niches occupied by earlier theropods.

Papers with free pdfs:

Derek W. Larson, Caleb M. Brown & David C. Evans (2016)
Dental Disparity and Ecological Stability in Bird-like Dinosaurs prior to the End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction.
Current Biology 26(10): P1325-1333
DOI: http: // dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.039
http: // www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(16)30249-4

pdf:
https://www.cell.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0960-9822%2816%2930249-4

Thomas E. Williamson & Stephen L. Brusatte (2014)
Small Theropod Teeth from the Late Cretaceous of the San Juan Basin, Northwestern New Mexico and Their Implications for Understanding Latest Cretaceous Dinosaur Evolution.
PLoS ONE 9(4): e93190.
doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0093190
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0093190

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Terry A. Gates, Lindsay E. Zanno, and Peter J. Makovicky (2015)
Theropod teeth from the upper Maastrichtian Hell Creek Formation âSueâ Quarry: New morphotypes and faunal comparisons.
Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 60 (1): 131â139.
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4202/app.2012.0145
http://app.pan.pl/article/item/app20120145.html

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On Wed, Dec 4, 2019 at 11:16 AM David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:

Gesendet:ÂMittwoch, 04. Dezember 2019 um 16:51 Uhr
Von:Â"Poekilopleuron" <dinosaurtom2015@seznam.cz>

> in his book "Dinosaurs Rediscovered", professor Mike Benton states that even if non-avian dinosaurs survived the K-Pg event, they would probably eventually perish some 50 or 40 million years ago (due to climatic changes and/or other perturbations). This is because of their limited ability to evolve new species in the last millions of years of the Cretaceous.

There is no such thing as an inherent "ability to evolve new species" that doesn't depend on the environment, which changes.

The idea that few new species _did_ evolve in the last few million years of the Cretaceous has long been abandoned: it was based simply on the fact that the Campanian record of North America is better than the Maastrichtian record of North America.