Did insects kill the dinosaurs?
Monday, January 21st, 2008Here’s an interesting story: Insect Attack May Have Finished Off Dinosaurs.
Apparently, a lot of disease carrying insects appeared at the time of the dinosaur mass extinction. If the dinosaurs’ immune system was not up to the task of defending the host against this, that might be what killed them all off.
“We can’t say for certain that insects are the smoking gun, but we believe they were an extremely significant force in the decline of the dinosaurs,” Poinar said. “Our research with amber shows that there were evolving, disease-carrying vectors in the Cretaceous, and that at least some of the pathogens they carried infected reptiles. This clearly fills in some gaps regarding dinosaur extinctions.”
Personally, I know nothing about dinos and cannot judge if this is a reasonable theory or not, but I did find it an interesting read.