Dinosaurs ‘would be with us today’ if their ‘sex lakes’ didn’t disappear, expert claims
An asteroid did not wipe out the dinosaurs, according to one biology expert
THE DINOSAURS would still walk among us today if Earth hadn't lost key parts of its ancient habitat.
That's according to one nature expert, who tells The Sun that shallow sex lakes across the globe were vital to the huge reptiles' dominance.
His astonishing new theory suggests the infamous asteroid that hit Earth 65million years ago was not responsible for the dinosaurs' demise.
"The asteroid can't have killed off the dinosaurs," leading biologist and author Professor Brian J Ford told The Sun.
"The impact would have affected all reptiles, so crocodiles and snakes, lizards and caimans, turtles, tortoises and alligators would all have died out too."
The shifting of Earth's plate tectonics – the gargantuan slabs of rock that make up our planet's crust – are instead responsible, according to Professor Ford.
He reckons the Earth was once covered in shallow lakes that were key to the dinosaurs' survival.
"As the continents drifted, the shallow lakes shrank, and the dinosaurs' ecosystem disappeared," Professor Ford said.
Dinosaur evolution in water explains how they became so huge that they had difficulty moving on land.
They needed the buoyancy to mate, since sex on land for a 100-ton beast would have been "impossible".
"The giant dinosaurs could only evolve wading in shallow water to take their weight," Professor Ford said.
"Once the Earth's surface changed, their environment disappeared ... and so did they.
Why did the dinosaurs die out?
Here's what you need to know...
- The dinosaur wipe-out was a sudden mass extinction event on Earth
- It wiped out roughly three-quarters of our planet's plant and animal species around 66million years ago
- This event marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and opened the Cenozoic Era, which we're still in today
- Scientists generally believe that a massive comet or asteroid around 9 miles wide crashed into Earth, devastating the planet
- This impact is said to have sparked a lingering "impact winter", severely harming plant life and the food chain that relied on it
- More recent research suggests that this impact "ignited" major volcanic activity, which also led to the wiping-out of life
- Some research has suggested that dinosaur numbers were already declining due to climate changes at the time
- But a study published in March 2019 claims that dinosaurs were likely "thriving" before the extinction event
"But if the vast shallow lakes had persisted? Dinosaurs would be with us today. And poachers would be hunting them just as they do any other spectacular wildlife."
Professor Ford has released a book on his new theory titled 'Too Big to Walk: The New Science of Dinosaurs', which is out this month.
He's not the only scientist who reckons dinosaurs could have survived today if it wasn't for disaster.
Dr Susannah Maidment, a dino expert at the Natural History Museum in London, agrees with the more widespread theory that a gigantic meteorite killed off the dinosaurs.
But, she says, the reptiles were so successful that they could have walked alongside humans had the doomsday space object missed our planet.
"If the meteorite hadn't hit, I don't think there's any reason the non-avian dinosaurs wouldn't still be around today," Dr Maidment told The Sun.
"They dominated ecosystems for 170 million years of the Mesozoic, and during the Jurassic and Cretaceous, every land animal over 1 metre in size was a dinosaur.
"They were an incredibly successful group, so I don't think there's any reason they wouldn't have continued to dominate ecosystems."
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Do you think the dinosaurs would've survived without an asteroid collision? Let us know in the comments!
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