Amazon Rain Forest is a result of meteor impact that killed dinosaurs
New Delhi : It is known that the dinosaurs got extinct from the earth around 66-million years ago due to a meteor impact, but we overlook how it changed our entire ecosystem. A new study has revealed that the meteor impact gave birth to the Amazon Rain Forest in South America, the most spectacularly diverse environment on the planet.
The new study has been published in Science. It analyzed tens of thousands of plant fossils and represents "a fundamental advance in knowledge," says Peter Wilf, a geoscientist at Pennsylvania State University, who was not involved in the research. "The authors demonstrate that the dinosaur extinction was also a massive reset event for neotropical ecosystems, putting their evolution on an entirely new path leading directly to the extraordinary, diverse, spectacular and gravely threatened rain forests in the region today."
These insights, Wilf adds, “provide new impetus for the conservation of the living evolutionary heritage in the tropics that supports human life, along with millions of living species.”
After the analysis of 50,000 pollen grains and 6000 fossil leaves it has been found that the Amazon Rain Forests were created after the impact of meteor. However, human activities and cut down of forests have emerged a new fears for the extinction of some of the species as well.
Modern day rain forests are the integral part of life on earth. The Amazon, in particular, plays a crucial role in regulating the planet’s freshwater cycle and climate.
