Human race exploded after dinosaurs went extinct

London: Mammals, including humans, diversified on Earth in great numbers after the dinosaurs went extinction, researchers, including an Indian-origin scientist, report.

According to the team from University College London, fossil records show that placental mammals, the group that today includes nearly 5,000 species including humans, became more varied in anatomy during the Paleocene epoch - the 10 million years immediately following the dinosaur event.

When dinosaurs went extinct, a lot of competitors and predators of mammals disappeared, meaning that a great deal of the pressure limiting what mammals could do ecologically was removed.

They clearly took advantage of that opportunity, as we can see by their rapid increases in body size and ecological diversity.

"Mammals evolved a greater variety of forms in the first few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct than in the previous 160 million years of mammal evolution under the rule of dinosaurs,” explained senior author Dr Anjali Goswami.