Climate Change Decided Who Ruled as Top Predator 35 Million Years Ago

Climate change decided who ruled as top predator 35 million years ago

Climate change determined Earth’s top predator 35 million years ago

An international team of researchers has reconstructed how the body sizes of Europe’s ancient carnivorous mammals changed during the Paleogene, a period spanning roughly 66 to 23 million years ago when mammals rapidly diversified after the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs. Their findings challenge a widely repeated evolutionary story: that the ancestors of modern cats, dogs, bears, and walruses rose to ecological dominance by simply outcomp…