1. The Paleocene Epoch (66-55 mya.)
2-3. The Paleocene is an epoch borne of ruin, beginning the very moment that the infamous dinosaur-killing asteroid grazed Earth’s surface. The world in its wake was left upheaved; ash and soot laced the hills, shrapnel-choked waves crashed far beyond the shores, and once lush, teeming forests were suddenly charred and silenced. The air swirled with a deadly cocktail of chemicals, from windblown crust minerals to black wildfire smoke. What made this so dangerous, however, was that it completely filled the sky for centuries on end. Any attempt by solar radiation to penetrate this barricade of dust proved futile. Amidst a dark, cold world on the ground, the plants starved first. Then, with this vital link in the food chain lopped off, every other living thing eventually felt the strain of extinction too. Yet, as bad as this may sound, life had risen from the ashes before. Maybe not from a strike as sudden as this one, but if our planet had learned anything from eras of devastation, it’s that complete surrender was never an option. Because despite everything, there were stragglers who were able to bed down and make it to the Cenozoic Era- and they weren’t ready to pack up just yet.
Mammals
4. Click the icons to learn how each group recovered
Marine Animals
Birds
Reptiles & Amphibians
Plants
Arthropods
Works Cited
Miraculously, the cold snap wasn’t enough to make these ectotherms throw in the towel. Large groups like marine reptiles and of course, dinosaurs, were wiped out, but smaller animals like snakes and frogs were able to bed down and wait until it was safe to come out again.
image: Joschua Knüppe
Because the plants had died, arboreal birds were left with no place to live, but ground-dwelling birds carried on their legacy. This group radiated as well, even taking on apex predator roles with the likes of terror birds by the mid Paleocene (2). Many also re-evolved flight to capitalize on the recovering trees.
Image: Tim Bertelink, 2016
Plants are an extremely resilient kingdom, and when they finally re-planted their roots, they spread across the landscape almost as quickly as the fire that had wiped many of them out (3). Without large herbivores to feed on them, the Paleocene was likely even more lush than it was during the Mesozoic.
Landscape reconstruction by F. Guillén - Barreda VD, Cúneo NR, Wilf P, Currano ED, Scasso RA, et al. (2012) Cretaceous/Paleogene Floral Turnover in Patagonia: Drop in Diversity, Low Extinction, and a Classopollis Spike. PLoS ONE 7(12): e52455. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0052455
Marine vertebrates, especially fish, were not as affected by the impact as terrestrial animals were, but oceanic plankton were hit by a metaphorical hammer. However, they swung back rather quickly, and the ocean as a whole was not altered in any world-changing way minus the loss of mososaurs and the like (5).
Arthropods did not recover immediately- the many pollinators relied on their host plants, which had taken a toll and needed some time to re-evolve to accommodate them. It took 9 myr at the most before both insects and host plants were on the rise again (4).
Image: Rene Sylvestersen, 2011
Image: Nixdraws on Tumblr
During the Mesozoic, while reptiles reigned supreme, mammals were backed into an ecological corner. To survive, they were forced to remain as small insectivores (1). But once they were out of the dinosaurs’ shadows, they had the room they needed to undergo evolutionary radiation, in which they rushed to fill open niches. Mammals achieved a variety of familiar forms by the end of the Paleocene, especially among rodents.
Image: Andrey Atuchin
1. Gregory P. Wilson "Mammals across the K/Pg boundary in northeastern Montana, U.S.A.: dental morphology and body-size patterns reveal extinction selectivity and immigrant-fueled ecospace filling,"Paleobiology 39(3), 429-469, (9 May 2013). https://doi.org/10.1666/12041 2. Manuel Pérez-Pueyo, Eduardo Puértolas-Pascual, Miguel Moreno-Azanza, Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, José Manuel Gasca, Carmen Núñez-Lahuerta, and José Ignacio Canudo "First Record of a Giant Bird (Ornithuromorpha) from the Uppermost Maastrichtian of the Southern Pyrenees, Northeast Spain," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 41(1), (23 September 2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2021.1900210 3. Wilson Deibel, P.,K., Wilson Mantilla, G.,P., & Strömberg, C.,A.E. (2024). Plant taxonomic turnover and diversity across the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in northeastern Montana. Paleobiology, 50(4), 608-626. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.22 4. Donovan, M. P., Ari, I., Wilf, P., Labandeira Conrad, C., & Rubén, C.,N. (2017). Rapid recovery of Patagonian plant–insect associations after the end-Cretaceous extinction. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1(1)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0012 5. Woods, L., Beckerman, A. P., Witts, J., Whittle, R., Hassall, C., Beger, M., & Dunhill, A. (2024). The K-Pg mass extinction did not permanently restructure marine ecosystems. Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, 56(5), Abstract no. 138-4. https://doi.org/10.1130/abs/2024AM-400678
*Any non-cited information is from my previous reading about the K-Pg over many years from many sources, it's a bit of a special interest of mine..
1. The Paleocene Epoch (66-55 mya.)
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Transcript
1. The Paleocene Epoch (66-55 mya.)
2-3. The Paleocene is an epoch borne of ruin, beginning the very moment that the infamous dinosaur-killing asteroid grazed Earth’s surface. The world in its wake was left upheaved; ash and soot laced the hills, shrapnel-choked waves crashed far beyond the shores, and once lush, teeming forests were suddenly charred and silenced. The air swirled with a deadly cocktail of chemicals, from windblown crust minerals to black wildfire smoke. What made this so dangerous, however, was that it completely filled the sky for centuries on end. Any attempt by solar radiation to penetrate this barricade of dust proved futile. Amidst a dark, cold world on the ground, the plants starved first. Then, with this vital link in the food chain lopped off, every other living thing eventually felt the strain of extinction too. Yet, as bad as this may sound, life had risen from the ashes before. Maybe not from a strike as sudden as this one, but if our planet had learned anything from eras of devastation, it’s that complete surrender was never an option. Because despite everything, there were stragglers who were able to bed down and make it to the Cenozoic Era- and they weren’t ready to pack up just yet.
Mammals
4. Click the icons to learn how each group recovered
Marine Animals
Birds
Reptiles & Amphibians
Plants
Arthropods
Works Cited
Miraculously, the cold snap wasn’t enough to make these ectotherms throw in the towel. Large groups like marine reptiles and of course, dinosaurs, were wiped out, but smaller animals like snakes and frogs were able to bed down and wait until it was safe to come out again.
image: Joschua Knüppe
Because the plants had died, arboreal birds were left with no place to live, but ground-dwelling birds carried on their legacy. This group radiated as well, even taking on apex predator roles with the likes of terror birds by the mid Paleocene (2). Many also re-evolved flight to capitalize on the recovering trees.
Image: Tim Bertelink, 2016
Plants are an extremely resilient kingdom, and when they finally re-planted their roots, they spread across the landscape almost as quickly as the fire that had wiped many of them out (3). Without large herbivores to feed on them, the Paleocene was likely even more lush than it was during the Mesozoic.
Landscape reconstruction by F. Guillén - Barreda VD, Cúneo NR, Wilf P, Currano ED, Scasso RA, et al. (2012) Cretaceous/Paleogene Floral Turnover in Patagonia: Drop in Diversity, Low Extinction, and a Classopollis Spike. PLoS ONE 7(12): e52455. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0052455
Marine vertebrates, especially fish, were not as affected by the impact as terrestrial animals were, but oceanic plankton were hit by a metaphorical hammer. However, they swung back rather quickly, and the ocean as a whole was not altered in any world-changing way minus the loss of mososaurs and the like (5).
Arthropods did not recover immediately- the many pollinators relied on their host plants, which had taken a toll and needed some time to re-evolve to accommodate them. It took 9 myr at the most before both insects and host plants were on the rise again (4).
Image: Rene Sylvestersen, 2011
Image: Nixdraws on Tumblr
During the Mesozoic, while reptiles reigned supreme, mammals were backed into an ecological corner. To survive, they were forced to remain as small insectivores (1). But once they were out of the dinosaurs’ shadows, they had the room they needed to undergo evolutionary radiation, in which they rushed to fill open niches. Mammals achieved a variety of familiar forms by the end of the Paleocene, especially among rodents.
Image: Andrey Atuchin
1. Gregory P. Wilson "Mammals across the K/Pg boundary in northeastern Montana, U.S.A.: dental morphology and body-size patterns reveal extinction selectivity and immigrant-fueled ecospace filling,"Paleobiology 39(3), 429-469, (9 May 2013). https://doi.org/10.1666/12041 2. Manuel Pérez-Pueyo, Eduardo Puértolas-Pascual, Miguel Moreno-Azanza, Penélope Cruzado-Caballero, José Manuel Gasca, Carmen Núñez-Lahuerta, and José Ignacio Canudo "First Record of a Giant Bird (Ornithuromorpha) from the Uppermost Maastrichtian of the Southern Pyrenees, Northeast Spain," Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 41(1), (23 September 2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/02724634.2021.1900210 3. Wilson Deibel, P.,K., Wilson Mantilla, G.,P., & Strömberg, C.,A.E. (2024). Plant taxonomic turnover and diversity across the Cretaceous/Paleogene boundary in northeastern Montana. Paleobiology, 50(4), 608-626. https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.22 4. Donovan, M. P., Ari, I., Wilf, P., Labandeira Conrad, C., & Rubén, C.,N. (2017). Rapid recovery of Patagonian plant–insect associations after the end-Cretaceous extinction. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1(1)https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-016-0012 5. Woods, L., Beckerman, A. P., Witts, J., Whittle, R., Hassall, C., Beger, M., & Dunhill, A. (2024). The K-Pg mass extinction did not permanently restructure marine ecosystems. Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, 56(5), Abstract no. 138-4. https://doi.org/10.1130/abs/2024AM-400678
*Any non-cited information is from my previous reading about the K-Pg over many years from many sources, it's a bit of a special interest of mine..