Abstract
Both great dinosaurian orders (Saurischia and Ornithischia) were major components of terrestrial vertebrate faunas for ∼150 Myr. The prevailing view is that dinosaurs attained an evolutionary acme late in the Cretaceous, after which they gradually declined in taxonomic diversity over ∼10 Myr to their extinction 63 Myr ago1–6. The postulated decline is usually supported by comparing diversity levels in 76 Myr-old and 64 Myr-old dinosaurian assemblages from North America. The resulting differences in diversity have never been compared, however, with those observed between older dinosaurian assemblages, when their extinction was not imminent. I show here that, taken as a whole, the known fossil record of North American dinosaurs shows no evidence of a decline in taxonomic diversity lasting several million years or more before their extinction.
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Russell, D. The gradual decline of the dinosaurs—fact or fallacy?. Nature 307, 360–361 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1038/307360a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/307360a0
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