(ORDO NEWS) — Paleontologists and geologists around the world have discovered signs of what helped dinosaurs that lived 200 million years ago survive the extinction between the Triassic and Jurassic periods – the presence of protofeathers.
Thus, the temperature in high latitudes fell below zero, so it was the protofeathers that helped the living primitive dinosaurs to adapt to it. They served for thermal insulation and helped to endure negative temperatures.
Dinosaurs in the late Triassic period lived mainly in middle and high latitudes, and animals of the pseudosuchian group, that is, the crocodile line of archosaurs, lived in low latitudes.
Such insulating covers helped the dinosaurs survive the volcanic winters at the border of the two periods about 200 million years ago.
According to the authors of the study, many groups of vertebrates died out precisely during such a winter – a cooling of the planetary climate due to atmospheric pollution with ash. This phenomenon occurs due to a major volcanic eruption.
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