Using a new technique that is counting the age of fossil-based uranium, the research team headed by Larry Heaman of the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, ensure that the femur of a hadrosaurs only 64.8 million years old.
That is, these plant-eating dinosaur lived about 700 thousand years after the phenomenon of mass destruction are believed by many paleontologists as the events that destroyed the dinosaurs of the entire surface of the Earth's land forever.
"Before it was believed that the mass extinction of dinosaurs occurred between 65.5 to 66 million years ago," Heaman said, as quoted by Science Daily, Friday, June 17, 2011. "It is believed, a giant meteor hitting the Earth throws sun blocking material. It causes changes in climate extremes and kill plants around the world, "he said.
In a report published in the journal Geology, Heaman and his team said, there are several possible reasons hadrosaurs from New Mexico's managed to survive the phenomenon of mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous era.
"There is a possibility that in certain areas, plants are not destroyed and a number of hadrosaurs managed to survive by eating plants," Heaman said.
For that, Heaman states, is currently open the odds that a dinosaur egg survived the extreme climate conditions. Nevertheless, it still must continue to be explored further.
With these latest findings, Heaman and his team believe that if the new measurement technique was used to measure the ages of other fossil samples, the paradigm of mass destruction that ended the life of all the dinosaurs may need to be revised.
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