Question

summarize (in several paragraphs) how the mass extinction of the dinosaurs affected the evolution of mammals.
REMINDER--- IT SHOULD include the usage of "EVOLUTIONARY THEORY" AND MENTION "PUNCTURED EQUILIBRIUM"
AS PART OF THE EXPLANATION (its for atleast 30 MARKS)

Answer 1

More than 99 per cent of all Earth-living creatures are extinct. The most studied mass extinction, which marked the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods some 66 million years ago, destroyed the nonavian dinosaurs and made way for rapid diversification and evolution of mammals and birds.

While they only came into their own after the dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago, mammals had maintained a low-profile life for some 150 million years before. Each year, new fossil finds show more of the early past. Researchers claimed in 2001 that a fossil found in China in 1985 is the remains of a small, furry animal which today was a relative of living mammals but lived in the early Jurassic period 195 million years ago. Called Hadrocodium wui, the little creature had some primary mammalian characteristics 40 million years earlier than the fossil record had previously established.

The number and abundance of mammals increased in the early Cenozoic period, after the dinosaurs had become extinct. In just 10 million years a brief burst of time by geological standards about 130 genera had evolved, comprising some 4,000 animals.

The rapid expansion of diversity of organisms into new life forms is known as adaptive radiation. One way that occurs is in reaction to events who reclaim previously occupied environmental zones and positions, making room for several new organisms who adapt to those empty living spaces. One such big event was the extinction of dinosaurs, destroying a once-dominant group of competitors while some mammals came into the picture.Yet the mammals did not automatically move into ecological positions that dinosaurs had vacated. It took the mammals several million years to develop only relatively large body sizes and the planet they inhabited was a different place from that populated by the dinosaurs.At the end of the Cretaceous, flowering plants had become dominant, providing food for burgeoning insect populations, which in turn, along with fruits and berries, became another high-quality food source for mammals. This whole evolutionary pattern follows punctuated equilibrium.