A new study has shed light on the cause behind an asteroid-surviving pot that destroyed dinosaurs around 66 million years ago.
The findings published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications Biology state that the crocodiles survived the asteroid because they were able to survive the environmental changes that occurred after the asteroid strike.
Believing in the effective and versatile body shape of the crocodiles, Dr Max Stockdale, lead author of the research, said that this may be the explanation for why the 200-million-year-old reptile survived the long-lived asteroid strike. and dinosaurs disappeared. Currently, there are 25 species of crocodiles living on the planet, and according to the research they look similar to those that existed during Jurassic times. This is significantly lower compared to the number of other animal species such as birds and berries.
According to research conducted by the University of Bristol, the slow evolution in the shape of a jar may have been due to the fact that they had already developed a shape that was flexible enough to survive a real global catastrophe.
This environmental change governed a ‘stop-start’ evolutionary pattern. The research explains that jars follow a precise symmetry, an evolutionary pattern. The rate of evolution in pots is slow, however, they grow faster due to environmental reasons.
Using a machine learning algorithm, the researchers determined the evolution rate of the reptile.
They measured the size of the body to understand the stage of evolution as it can be a sign of a number of other factors such as population size, food requirements of the animal, growth of the animal and so on.
According to the report, this latest study complements other research published 20 years ago that suggested that pottery durability is a result of their shape.
There were many factors that helped crocodiles survive after the asteroid hit the Earth. One of them involved using energy from the sun to survive because they needed warmth from the environment. Therefore, they did not depend on food for energy like the warm-blooded animals.
The animal is strong that enables it to survive from injuries. They can live in darkness and can travel both in land or water. There was darkness after the asteroid strike as it triggered a nuclear winter.
Along with many other surviving devices, pots can hold their breath underwater for hours. The research team will now move on to find out why some species of prehistoric crocodiles died and others survived.