Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years

[Tank]

Dinosaurs Survived Mass Extinction by 700,000 Years, Fossil Find Suggests

ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2011) â€" University of Alberta researchers determined that a fossilized dinosaur bone found in New Mexico confounds the long established paradigm that the age of dinosaurs ended between 65.5 and 66 million years ago.

Now this really will throw the cat amongst the pigeons!

[terranus]

Now this really will throw the cat amongst the pigeons!

Yeah this will definitely cause quite a stir among Archaeologists and the like. Mainly because it raises the questions of: If this giant plant-eater was alive 700,000 years AFTER the asteroid hit, then obviously not all big non-avian dinosaurs died out because of the impact. But if the asteroid didn't kill them - what did? And just how long did they survive after the asteroid impact? 700,000 years is a long time...but what if they lasted even longer than that?

[Asmodean]

A relatively small and possibly isolated population could have survived for quite some time after such an event, no..?

This will be an interesting thing to follow though... 700 000 years... That "relatively small" would have to be sufficiently large for that, at least.

[Tank]

Well the flip side of the coin is the dating accuracy of the original estimates. As fossils, by there very nature form in sedimentary rocks, they can't be dated by radiological means as the sedimentary rock is made of many types of rock that by default must be older that the sedimentary layers they form. It could be that the original dates are off. The article make no mention of where in the stratigraphy the fossil was found relative to the KT boundary, it's probably not known at this time. One way to say that some dinosaurs categorically survived the KT event would be have to find fossils above the KT boundary in the same contiguous sedimentary strata, and that does not appear to be the case here as I'm sure it would have been mentioned.

Definitely a case of 'watch this space!'