Were Dinosaurs Dying Or Thriving Before Their Extinction?

For years, paleontologist and onlookers were only concerned about the day the dinosaurs died, which was brought upon them by a giant asteroid. And no one was asking about how they were doing right before the collision, that is until recently, when new research suggested that dinosaurs may have actually already been going extinct. This spawned an entire new debate, which has now lead to two schools of thought, both with their own supporting evidence, which raises the question: who is right?

Thumbnail: Liscianigiochi

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[waranontwiwaha]

It’s almost impossible for an entire clade of animal (dinosaur as a whole) to go extinct without mass extinction event. On genera or families level? Sure, it happened all the time, but there will always be other more adaptable dinosaurs to later evolved and fill those niches. It took a devastating event that turn ecosystem up side down to wipe them all (and even then, birds still survived).

[mitchellskene]

If I'm not mistaken, outside of North America, they seemed to be thriving. To my knowledge, North America is the only region where there was a noticeable decline in the number of species present in the 10-15 million years leading up to the asteroid impact.

[Kodiie]

“Every one asked how I died, but no one asked how I was doing😢”

Said the T-Rex struggling to wipe a tearful face with a tissue.

[Justmonika]

Both sides are kind of right. Low diversity has its pluses too. The T-Rex was a really dominating predator that would've made short work of Triceratops ancestors meanwhile the Triceratops did the same to the T-Rex ancestors. The lower diversity is down to the competition: the species that did exist were really good at what they were good at.

[gshaindrich]

the bigger they are, the harder they fall: The low diversity is partly easily explainable, with adult specimens being massive while, there was a physical size constraint to the eggs, this meant that e.g a single sauropod species will have filled multiple herbivore niches with all of its growth stages. The same applied to carnivores.

[kade-qtzu]

Yeah, I don't think so. Maybe some dinosaur groups were going extinct, but non avian dinosaurs as a whole would probably still be around.

[Acridotheresfuscus]

This theory seems very unlikely. It's like saying the homo genus is going extinct. Many species were going extinct. But more species of dinosaurs would've evolved to fill in the extinct ones niche. And many were super successful too like the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Another thing is that most things don't fossilize.

[calessel]

There's a difference between a mass dinosaur die out event which afterwards sees various new genus of dinosaur replace those that dominated niches before, and a complete extinction of the dinosaur clade. In the late Cretaceous dinosaurs may have been heading towards a natural mass die out but I doubt the dinosaur clade would have gone extinct with out the asteroid impact.

[domination]

I mean just because there's not a lot of diversity doesn't mean that there was a problem it means that the ones that were in charge or they are actually worked so they didn't need to diversify. but that can fight them in the but when something bad happens they can't hold on. because there's not as many different species too you know fill in the gaps.

[oreolaw]

I am loving your videos I don't know what it is about you or your videos but you are probably my favourite small YouTuber making these sort of videos

[justskip]

Are mammals going extinct now? Many species died off in last few thousand years with the climate change of ice age followed by explosion of humans populating the continents and spreading many other species with them.

I could continue by saying same things as others in the comments and ones mentioned in the video, but those have already been said. I'd rather point out that birds are still around and have speciated to occupy many different ecological niches. Asteroid hitting at vulnerable moment may be true, but it does not equate that inevitable extinction was going to come anyway. Perhaps dinosaurs were even better suited to try to survive the extinction than they would have with higher number of species and they still didn't make it beyond birds.

[TheaSvendsen]

That was an awesome video and you went through everything that I’ve been wondering about. Saving this for my fellow dino nerds :D

[veggieboyultimate]

I don't think the dinosaurs were on their way to extinction, more like a temporary population decline and would have recovered fully if not the meteor hit the Earth.

[Crakinator]

The dinosaurs were the absolute dominant clade in their time. They weren’t getting replaced without a devastating mass extinction event. There’s nothing they could have done to survive the meteor, they just died in a very unlucky, but admittedly pretty badass way.

[Carnidoom]

So good content. Def gonna sub as ypu take specific topics xan i mke a suggestion? If you could make a video bout if triassic animals lived after triassic and into jurrasic like when they truely died out

[lindagodfrey]

Obviously they were dying out even before because of the Deccan traps

[globin]

Even if they were doing poorly, the non-avian dinosaurs would probably still have survived if the asteroid hadn't hit.

[MrJmd]

Can you do a video about the dinosaurs of Appalachia? All the vids I can find are long webcam discussions

[Korb-Bee]

Mammals were far more diverse in the late Eocene than today but doesnt mean we are on our way out.

[panos]

In some cases some species have hard times and others didn't.