National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Photo: Did the Rise of Germs Wipe Out the Dinosaurs?


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Studies of bloodsucking insects that lived alongside the dinosaurs—such as this ancient tick found in amber from Myanmar (Burma)—suggest that many infectious diseases were emerging just before the dinos died out, about 65 million years ago.

Without immunity to the new illnesses, dino populations might have been weakened and unable to survive cataclysmic events such as sudden climate change or an asteroid impact, argue the authors of a new book.

Photograph courtesy Oregon State University