It is believed that the Cretaceous-tertiary extinction that occurred approximately 65 million years ago, has destroyed the dinosaurs, but largely spared other reptiles. There it was. Nicolas Longrich of Yale University (USA) and his colleagues came to the conclusion that disappeared about 83% of lizards and snakes.

This, of course, not a sensation, rather the contrary: now extinction looks more consistent, because it is difficult to imagine the catastrophe, is able to kill the dinosaurs, leaving a reserve of snakes and lizards. Cannot be erased from the face of the earth dominant predators and herbivores, without causing destruction of ecosystems on a large scale.

Whatever was the root cause of extinction - the fall of the meteorite in Mexico or prolonged volcanism in India, before cataclysm snakes and lizards felt perfectly (unlike gradually came to decline of the dinosaurs): fossil chronicle recorded 27 species of lizards and three snakes. After the catastrophe, the only survivor five kinds, and most of the disappeared disappeared from the annals of a sudden.

If you really atmosphere faded from gases, dust and ashes, and most plants died, the herbivores were to follow their example, and only then would come the turn of predators. It is likely that relatively painlessly from the Cretaceous period came only scavengers and preyed on them animals. This means that, when everything began to fall dead, came the heyday of beetles, worms and maggots. And the last, most likely, and were food for the survivors.

Mr., Longrich believes that received his team's findings are consistent with meteorite hypothesis, despite the recently introduced seemingly ample evidence in favor of volcanoes.

It should be noted that the authors are primarily based on data from North America, but serves its findings as global. Indeed, if the extinction happened because of the fall of the meteorite in Mexico and then dust blinded out the sun, and the main share of disappearances had to happen in America. But we have to prove that the same thing happened in other parts of the world.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Prepared according to LiveScience.