According to a new report by University of Arizona scientists, the same meteor that killed the dinosaurs is also responsible for mesmerizing fall foliage.

According to a study published in PLOS Biology this week titled "Plant Ecological Strategies Shift Across the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary," the meteor that is said to have killed the dinosaurs also destroyed many evergreen flower plants. Meanwhile, deciduous plants, whose leaves change colors as they die, were better able to survive.

One of the ways deciduous plants and evergreen plants differ is that deciduous plants grow fast, while evergreen plants grow slowly, prefer shadier areas and have dark leaves, according to a Sept. 16 release by PLOS Biology.

"When you look at forests around the world today, you don't see many forests dominated by evergreen flowering plants," Benjamin Blonder, the study's lead author, said. "Instead, they are dominated by deciduous species, plants that lose their leaves at some point during the year."

The meteor in question struck the Yucatán peninsula in Mexico 66 million years ago.

"If you think about a mass extinction caused by catastrophic event such as a meteorite impacting Earth, you might imagine all species are equally likely to die," Blonder continued. "Survival of the fittest doesn't apply -- the impact is like a reset button. The alternative hypothesis, however, is that some species had properties that enabled them to survive.

The report was conducted by studying around 1,000 fossilized plant leaves found embedded into North Dakota's Hell Creek Formation, a gathering of rock layers.

"Our study provides evidence of a dramatic shift from slow-growing plants to fast-growing species," Blonder said. "This tells us that the extinction was not random, and the way in which a plant acquires resources predicts how it can respond to a major disturbance. And potentially this also tells us why we find that modern forests are generally deciduous and not evergreen."

The meteor also reportedly created a lot of dust, which lowered the temperature and led to a brutal winter, another obstacle the deciduous plants were better equipped to overcome.

"The hypothesis is that the impact winter introduced a very variable climate," Blonder explained. "That would have favored plants that grew quickly and could take advantage of changing conditions, such as deciduous plants."

---

Follow Scharon Harding on Twitter: @ScharHar.

Related