Study Upends Century-Old Theory: Dinosaurs Thriving When Asteroid Struck

For a century, science told a story of dinosaurs fading before the asteroid arrived — a slow unraveling that made extinction feel almost inevitable. New fossil evidence from New Mexico, published in Science in 2025, quietly dismantles that narrative: dinosaurs were not declining 66 million years ago, but flourishing across diverse ecosystems. Their disappearance was not the conclusion of a long fade, but a sudden erasure — a reminder that catastrophe does not wait for the vulnerable, and that endings can arrive without warning even for the thriving.