Natural History Wanderings

The New York Times reports

While the extinction affected some flower species, most lineages survived and the catastrophe may have helped them become a dominant form of plant life.

When a mountain-size slab of space rock rammed into the Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago, the fallout was apocalyptic. Tsunamis washed away coastlines, raging fires engulfed forests and dust and debris blotted out the sun for months. Roughly three-fourths of the planet’s species, most notably non-avian dinosaurs, were wiped out.

But one group appears to have weathered the maelstrom. In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Biology Letters, researchers present evidence that flowering plants survived the Cretaceous-Paleogene, or K-Pg, mass extinction relatively unscathed compared with other living things on Earth at the time. The catastrophe may have even helped flowering plants blossom into the dominant green things they are today.

Read more at Wiping Out the Dinosaurs Let Countless Flowers Bloom