Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution
The Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution (abbreviated KTR) describes the intense diversification of angiosperms, insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals during the Middle to Late Cretaceous (125-80 mya).[1]
Before Lloyd et al.'s 2008 paper described the KTR, it had been widely accepted in paleontology that new families of dinosaurs evolved during the Mid to Late Cretaceous, including the euhadrosaurs, neoceratopsians, ankylosaurids, pachycephalosaurs, carcharodontosaurines, troodontids, dromaeosaurs, and ornithomimosaurs.[1] However, the authors of the paper have suggested that the apparent "new diversification" of dinosaurs during this time is due to sampling biases in the fossil record, and better preserved fossils in Cretaceous age sediments than in earlier Triassic or Jurassic sediments.
A comprehensive molecular study of evolution of mammals at the taxonomic level of family also showed important diversification during the KTR.[2] Similarly, bee pollinator diversification strongly correlates with angiosperm flower appearance and specialization during the same era. [3]
For nearly the entirety of Earth's history, including most of the Phanerozoic eon, marine species diversity exceeded terrestrial species diversity, a pattern which was reversed during the Middle Cretaceous as a result of the KTR in what has been termed a biological "great divergence", named after the historical Great Divergence.[4]
See also
References
- ^ a b Lloyd, G. T.; et al. (2008). "Dinosaurs and the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution. 2008". Proceedings of the Royal Society B. 275 (1650): 2483–2490. doi:10.1098/rspb.2008.0715. PMC 2603200. PMID 18647715.
- ^ Meredith, Robert W. (2011). "Impacts of the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution and KPg Extinction on Mammal Diversification". Science. 334 (6055): 521–524. Bibcode:2011Sci...334..521M. doi:10.1126/science.1211028. PMID 21940861. S2CID 38120449.
- ^ Cardinal, S.; Straka, J.; Danforth, B. N. (2010). "Comprehensive phylogeny of apid bees reveals the evolutionary origins and antiquity of cleptoparasitism". Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 107 (37): 16207–11. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10716207C. doi:10.1073/pnas.1006299107. PMC 2941306. PMID 20805492.
- ^ Vermeij, Geerat J.; Grosberg, Richard K. (2 July 2010). "The Great Divergence: When Did Diversity on Land Exceed That in the Sea?". Integrative and Comparative Biology. 50 (4): 675–682. doi:10.1093/icb/icq078. Retrieved 1 October 2022.
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