Did Dinosaurs Decline Before Chicxulub Meteor Strike? New Study Answers

The Chicxulub meteor, which slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula around 66 million years ago, is thought to have led to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off three quarters of life on Earth -- dinosaurs included.

Dinosaurs may have been in decline millions of years before the meteor strike often attributed to their extinction, according to research published Tuesday examining the role played by changing climate. The Chicxulub meteor, which slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula around 66 million years ago, is thought to have led to the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event that killed off three quarters of life on Earth -- dinosaurs included. Now new research suggests that a number of species of the terrible lizards may have been declining up to 10 million years before the meteor strike. Research published in the journal Nature examined data from 1600 dinosaur remains found across the planet to model how common certain species of carnivorous and herbivorous dinosaurs were in the late Cretaceous.