Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Email address Thank you! It’s hard to pick a favorite dish on your Thanksgiving plate. But regardless of your selection, there’s a decent chance its history can be traced back to one of the most cataclysmic events in Earth’s history. “The dinosaurs’ absence meant changes in the forest structure-you went from a more open canopy to a more-closed canopy rainforest,” explained Mike Donovan, a paleobotanist and the fossil plants collections manager at Chicago’s Field Museum. “This denser rainforest provided an opportunity for plants that grew on vines on tree trunks, including things like grapes and legumes.” Around 66 million years ago, a 6. This Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event ultimately wiped out at least three-quarters of all species, including the planet’s reigning reptiles. But dinosaurs, reptiles, and other animals weren’t the only species that died off. Plenty of flora from global ecosystems disappeared too. According to Donovan, the ecological gaps didn’t remain barren for long. “Many of the plants that evolved in the years following the extinction of the dinosaurs are foundational in the food chain. They make up a huge portion of our diet, are involved in building construction materials, pharmaceuticals,” he said. “Really, we couldn’t survive without them.” Green beans, yams, coffee, cacao-all these and more only began developing after Earth’s megafauna disappeared, granting them the space and time to flourish in what eventually became present-day rainforests. Like dinosaurs, the ancestors of today’s beloved Thanksgiving ingredients are often preserved as fossil specimens in the geological record. Many examples are currently on display at the Field Musuem in the temporary exhibit, After the Age of Dinosaurs. “The fossil record of plants from this time shows us how these living plants evolved-where they came from, how they’ve changed over time,” said Donovan. “From them, we can also learn about how plants may react to things like environmental changes in the future, by stepping in the past.”.
https://www.popsci.com/science/thanksgiving-dinner-dinosaurs/
Without dinosaurs, there’d be no Thanksgiving dinner
