Morocco dinosaur discovery gives clues on why they went extinct

New fossils of abelisaurs from north Africa suggest that African dinosaurs remained diverse up to the very end.

That suggests their demise came suddenly, with the impact of a giant asteroid.

Dinosaurs may have swum out to islands searching for food, as deer and elephants do today , and some drowned.

Fossils from the Great Plains in North America may record a decline in dinosaur diversity, this may be a local phenomenon, not a global one.

It's possible global cooling in the latest Cretaceous hit higher-latitude environments hard, reducing diversity.

But the African dinosaur fauna hints that at low latitudes, dinosaurs were thriving, even diversifying.