A Time-Series Model of Dinosauria Diversity

It is widely held that the dinosaurs were driven to near extinction because of the Chicxulub asteroid collision with the Earth about 65 million years ago (MA). Without doubt, dinosaur diversity in the fossil record after the collision was at most a percent of what it was prior to the collision. But whether the collision was the principal cause of the extinction is more difficult to assess. Here I compute and compare models of the time series of the number of genera of the Dinosauria and the Mollusca in the period 230 MA 50 MA. The models are agnostic about whether specific events occurred, and in this sense do not require Chicxulub to explain the Dinosaurian diversity collapse.