Rare look at the last days of the dinosaurs shows they were thriving, scientists say

CNN —

A site in the San Juan Basin of northwestern New Mexico is providing a rare glimpse into the last days of the dinosaurs.

Rocks and fossils at the Naashoibito Member site show an ecosystem that was filled with a diverse population of dinosaurs just before they disappeared from Earth.

Paleontologists have long debated if the dinosaurs suddenly went extinct when a 6.2-mile-wide asteroid crashed into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period, or if they were in a gradual decline and living in weakened ecosystems ahead of the catastrophic event.

Answering that question requires finding fossils and dating the surrounding rock to come up with an accurate timeline of the site. But identifying fossils in an area accurately dated to just before the