García-Girón, Jorge;
Chiarenza, Alfio Alessandro;
Alahuhta, Janne;
DeMar Jr, David;
Heino, Jani;
Mannion, Philip;
Williamson, Thomas;
... Brusatte, Stephen; + view all
(2022)
Shifts in food webs and niche stability shaped survivorship and extinction at the end-Cretaceous.
Science advances
, 8
(49)
, Article eadd504. 10.1126/sciadv.add5040.
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Abstract
It has long been debated why groups such as non-avian dinosaurs became extinct whereas mammals and other lineages survived the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction 66 million years ago. We used Markov networks, ecological niche partitioning, and Earth System models to reconstruct North American food webs and simulate ecospace occupancy before and after the extinction event. We find a shift in latest Cretaceous dinosaur faunas, as medium-sized species counterbalanced a loss of megaherbivores, but dinosaur niches were otherwise stable and static, potentially contributing to their demise. Smaller vertebrates, including mammals, followed a consistent trajectory of increasing trophic impact and relaxation of niche limits beginning in the latest Cretaceous and continuing after the mass extinction. Mammals did not simply proliferate after the extinction event; rather, their earlier ecological diversification might have helped them survive.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Shifts in food webs and niche stability shaped survivorship and extinction at the end-Cretaceous |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1126/sciadv.add5040 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add5040 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright© 2022 The Authors, some rights reserved;exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science.No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a CreativeCommonsAttributionNonCommercialLicense4.0 (CC BY-NC). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10158736 |
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