Some 66 million years ago, mammals caught their lucky break. But little is known about the time period directly after the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction, or K-Pg event, because the fossil record is lacking. Now, a team of paleontologists has uncovered a trove of thousands of fossils in Colorado that provides an in-depth look at the first million years following the K-Pg mass extinction event. “We provide the most vivid picture of recovery of an ecosystem on land after any mass extinction,” said Tyler Lyson, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Although he has found many dinosaurs, uncovering fossils of species that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the dinosaur extinction had proven rather elusive in his field of study.

Source: New York Times October 24, 2019 18:00 UTC