Fossil Records
Fossils from New Mexico and Colorado show that the doomsday asteroid of 66million years ago may have caused the extinction of forests. However in research published last year Joanna Morgan put that idea to the test by setting pine needles to fire and found that the thermal pulse from impact couldn’t ignite the kind of global canopy-replacing wildfires.
Morgan’s version of events reduced sunlight and debris as the cause of the plants drying out and dying. In short the sun, the speed of debris created friction and new plants emerged and learnt how to survive in those climate conditions.