It was in the news today that researchers in China have determined the asteroid impact to not be the primary reason for the demise of the dinosaurs. They were on their way out already when the asteroid hit. It is only the line of the flying dinosaurs that would continue.
We saw in the posting "The Bone To Flesh Ratio", on the meteorology and biology blog, that simple physics brought the dinosaurs to their end. When a creature with bones dies and gets buried by sediment, the atoms of it's flesh return to circulation in the biosphere much faster than the atoms of it's bones. This is why skeletons are found.
So as time goes on the atoms of bone material get progressively more scarce relative to flesh material. Since larger creatures require more bone mass, relative to the mass of flesh, creatures with bones must get smaller over time. This is what brought the end of the dinosaurs.
Flying dinosaurs were able to continue because they, by necessity, had lighter bones than land dinosaurs and so required less bone material.
Here is a link to the original posting:
www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/2009/07/bone-to-flesh-ratio.html?m=0
Related to flying dinosaurs is how plants got onto distant islands:
www.markmeeklife.blogspot.com/2009/07/pterosaurs-and-tropical-islands.html?m=0
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