The asteroid that ended the Cretaceous took with it famous dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops, as well as lesser-known but bizarre creatures like Anzu, or the "chicken from hell". There were duck-billed dinosaurs, long-necked dinosaurs, dinosaurs with armour all over their bodies – and, very quickly, all of them were dead.
In the shadow of these kings and queens of the Late Cretaceous, mammals like Purgatorius were small and scrappy, many of them filling the kinds of ecological niches today occupied by rodents. How was it that this miscellaneous group of seemingly vulnerable creatures – including our ancestors – survived doomsday?
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https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220812-dinosaur-extinction-why-did-mammals-survive
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