Talking about Smithsonian Mag – here’s an interesting article that may adjust your dinosaur imaginings:
Rainforests did not yet exist when the Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops roamed the Earth. None of the iconic “terrible lizards” that we so often associate with steaming, dense jungles lived in any such habitat. In fact, it was the destruction of the non-avian dinosaurs that allowed our planet’s first rainforests to form.
Despite depictions of dinosaurs peeking through palm fronds in films from Fantasia to Jurassic Park, paleobotanists have found that Earth’s earliest rainforests only sprang up in the wake of the terrible asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous. The absence of big dinosaurs, as well as the proliferation of plants known as angiosperms—often called “flowering plants,” as they flower and bear fruit—finally allowed warm, humid forests to grow dense. What were once relatively open, dinosaur-trampled landscapes closed into thick forests where many more small species could evolve and take on new shapes, including our early primate ancestors.
