长期以来，人们一直在争论非鸟类恐龙是在白垩纪末（6600万年前）突然灭绝还是逐渐灭绝，因为此时它们的化石记录主要局限于北美北部。
研究组将南部的一个恐龙丰富的区域，新墨西哥州的Naashoibito段，限制在最晚的白垩纪（~ 6640万年至6600万年），保存了一些最后已知的非鸟类恐龙。生态模拟表明，北美陆生脊椎动物在白垩纪晚期和古近纪早期保持了高度的多样性和地方性，生物省受温度和地理的影响。这反驳了跨大陆动物群多样性低的观点，并表明恐龙是多样化的，在白垩纪末期小行星撞击前的最后几百年里，恐龙被划分为不同的区域组合。
附：英文原文
Title: Late-surviving New Mexican dinosaurs illuminate high end-Cretaceous diversity and provinciality
Author: Andrew G. Flynn, Stephen L. Brusatte, Alfio Alessandro Chiarenza, Jorge García-Girón, Adam J. Davis, C. Will FenleyIV, Caitlin E. Leslie, Ross Secord, Sarah Shelley, Anne Weil, Matthew T. Heizler, Thomas E. Williamson, Daniel J. Peppe
Issue&Volume: 2025-10-23
Abstract: It has long been debated whether non-avian dinosaurs went extinct abruptly or gradually at the end-Cretaceous (66 million years ago), because their fossil record at this time is mostly limited to northern North America. We constrain a dinosaur-rich unit to the south, the Naashoibito Member in New Mexico, to the very latest Cretaceous (~66.4 to 66.0 million years), preserving some of the last-known non-avian dinosaurs. Ecological modeling shows that North American terrestrial vertebrates maintained high diversity and endemism in the latest Cretaceous and early Paleogene, with bioprovinces shaped by temperature and geography. This counters the notion of a low-diversity cross-continental fauna and suggests that dinosaurs were diverse and partitioned into regionally distinct assemblages during the final few hundred thousand years before the end-Cretaceous asteroid impact.
DOI: adw3282
Source: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw3282