Did Dead Dinos Lead to Massive Fruit?
When dinos died, fruit grew wide. At least, so says an international research team led by Renske E. Onstein (German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity) in a paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society.
For 25 million years aer the demise of nonavian dinosaurs, there was a so-called “megaherbivore gap.” Big plant-eating dinos that had munched on fruiting plants were extinct, and mammals had not matched them in their mega-size. During the Mesozoic Era (the Age of Dinosaurs), certain plants such as tropical palms had small fruits and spines to protect those fruits from being eaten. But during the megaherbivore gap, those plants lost their spikey defensive structures and their fruits grew larger.
It would not be until the Late Eocene Epoch 40 million years ago that plants would have to rethink their lazy strategy of abandoning spines while growing fat. Suddenly, for plants, it was time to get lean-and-mean all over again!