Mammals were almost destroyed with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago

Some inherent feature of mammal biology allowed them to adapt after global disaster.

Read the whole story

 

[rmgoat]

d0x[/url]":1umtm0nf]

Torbjörn Larsson, OM[/url]":1umtm0nf]Mammals are just lucky, they didn't need a wish bone.

Fatesrider, a recent article claims the scene was set before brooding. Avian dinosaurs had beaks and were specialized on seeds. Buried seeds would have sustained them until the plants grew back. That would explain why non-beaked avian analogs among dinosaurs didn't make it. YMMV of course.

Today seems to be nitpick time:

This dark period of die-outs is called the K-T mass extinction,

More correct today is the Cretaceous-Paleogene, K-Pg or perhaps better K/Pg (?) boundary, the two former which the press release uses. [Thanks, Keysh!]

And it wasn't lack of smarts either, because winged dinosaurs (aka birds) didn't manage to out-compete mammals, despite their intelligence.

Birds did out-compete mammals. There are ~ 10,000 avian species, but just ~ 6,000 mammalian species.

Which takes me to this:

Keysh[/url]":1umtm0nf]
Their "counterparts among the Dinosauria" did not recover at all, because they were all extinct.

I am willing to bet some surviving mammals were seed eaters as well, even if tubers would be a better survival diet.

Well we can still even the odds and get rid of some birds. Ones like pigeons and seagulls have my vote. Sure sure eco system and all but can we at least kill the seagulls? I don't live anywhere near the damn ocean and I see them

The domestic cat (Latin: Felis catus) seems well on it's way to reducing the number of bird species. Unfortunately for you they are unlikely to make much impact on the species you named.

 

[rmgoat]

JPan[/url]":k6ppw03l]

SixDegrees[/url]":k6ppw03l]

ViciousAndCruel[/url]":k6ppw03l]i think it also had to do with how quickly a species matured before having the next generation. Mice sized beasties are fast. Elephant sized Dino's probably not as much.

But a lot more very small dinosaurs died out along with their rarer, elephant-size brethren. And dinosaur development rates were, apparently, very fast, at least in many cases. It's an interesting idea, but I don't think it holds up very well to the data.

Mammals were rat sized, dinos at best cat sized. Huge difference. Ask an Australian if its possible to exterminate dogs from an island and the answer is most likely yes, cats and the answer is "with a lot of effort". Rats and the answer is "forget about it".
I don't think there is much more need for explanations of what happened.

There are no rats in Alberta, a Canadian province for those that don't know. They are fortunate in that they have only two rat friendly borders with part of Montana and Saskatchewan to defend. The Rocky mountains are a good barrier to the west and the northern border is also very rat unfriendly as is the northern half of the Saskatchewan border. $350,000 Cdn annually, taxpayers money well spent.

Saskatchewan doesn’t have a rat patrol, but the province has stepped up its rat control effort in recent years. Two-thirds of its regional municipalities are now rat-free and the province could be entirely rat-free within a decade.

Contrary to your belief several islands have had rats eradicated, see the link below.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/13/85928 ... radication