Did dinosaurs live in rainforests as shown in Jurassic Park films? No, because of this reason

Anybody who watched the Jurassic Park series of movies would believe that dinosaurs roamed rainforests. But that's far from true, according to scientists. The reason? Rain forests did not exist till much after the dinosaurs were wiped off the earth in an extinction event that is thought to have happened when an asteroid hit the planet.

Palaeobotanists say the rainforests that we see today came into existence centuries after the cataclysmic events that led to the extinction of dinosaurs.

An article in The Smithsonian magazine noted that in fact, it was the destruction of non-flying dinosaurs that allowed the rainforests to form and thrive.

"Paleobotanists have found that Earth’s earliest rainforests only sprang up in the wake of the terrible asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous," said the article.

The absence of big dinosaurs, as well as the proliferation lowering plants finally allowed warm, humid forests to grow dense, it noted. "What were once relatively open, dinosaur-trampled landscapes closed into thick forests where many more small species could evolve and take on new shapes, including our early primate ancestors."

"Can you imagine something as big as a T. rex, a Stegosaurus, or even a giant sauropod traipsing through a rainforest?” University of Wyoming paleobotanist Ellen Currano was quoted as saying in the article. "Just imagine multi-tonne animals threading through clusters of close-growing trunks."

Currano pointed out that dinosaurs "altered" the landscapesand are partially the reason why rainforests did not exist until after they vanished.

So when did rainforests come into existence?

The first fossil remains of a rainforest were found in 2009 in a coal mine in Colombia. That was estimated to be at least 58 million years old.

(With inputs from agencies)