China finds new possible cause for dinosaur extinction

Chinese scientists have discovered that a sustained decline in dinosaur diversity happened in the Late Cretaceous period through studies on dinosaur egg fossils.

Researchers assessed 1,000 fossilized dinosaur eggs and eggshells from the Shanyang Basin in central China’s Shaanxi Province, and identified a decline in dinosaur diversity.

They concluded that such a decline weakened the dinosaurs' ability to adapt to environmental upheavals derived from major natural disasters that eventually caused their extinction.