Experts now say dinosaurs would have likely continued to dominate the planet had it not been for the asteroid.
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00:00 It's long been known that a giant asteroid hit the Earth when dinosaurs still walked
00:06 it, sending them on the path to extinction.
00:08 But now researchers from the University of Bath and the Natural History Museum say, if
00:12 not for that fateful impact, dinosaurs would have thrived for many more years.
00:16 It's long been believed that even before the asteroid struck Earth, dino populations
00:20 were likely in decline.
00:21 But using dinosaur family trees of a much broader variety than any previous study, and
00:25 examining the evolutionary rates of those families, experts were able to conclude that
00:29 the dominant species at the time would have continued to produce offspring if not for
00:33 the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which the researchers say they would have
00:36 continued to be the quote "dominant group of land animals on the planet" for years
00:40 to come.
00:41 Meaning if not for the giant rock falling from the sky some 66 million years ago, dinosaurs
00:45 might still be walking around today.
00:47 Ok, maybe not today, but it certainly could have changed the evolutionary trajectory of
00:51 our planet forever.
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