Re: Dinosaurs survived in Antarctica? (Was: Re: "Dinosaurs Died W ithin Hours After Asteroid Hit Earth...")

[Nick Pharris <npharris@umich.edu>]

Quoting Michael Kaib <michael@kaib.org>:

> Thanks for the extinction rates figures. Its an importnd info that crocs
> suffered, too. Especially the terrestrials. The extinction rate of
> insects sounds surprisingly low,  assuming an average existence
> timeframe of 5 Ma for a species.

Quoting David Marjanoviæ <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>:

>Insecta (damage types to leaves)    51    27

If I read this correctly, there are 51 documented leaf-damage types in the late
Maastrichtian, of which 27% are gone after the K-Pg boundary.  A leaf-damage
type is not necessarily restricted to a single species (it could be
characteristic of a genus or other higher taxon), so the actual count in terms
of species could be considerably higher.

And that's completely ignoring the insect species that didn't damage leaves!

Nick Pharris
Department of Linguistics
University of Michigan