What were the conditions that prevailed on the earth 66 million years ago, before the dinosaurs became extinct?

According to the researchers at the McGill University and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, the forests were the same and they recovered from a fire in the same way that they do now.

During an expedition that the team of researchers had in southern Saskatchewan in Canada, they discovered the first fossil evidence of the ecology of forest fire - the process of re-growth of plants after a fire - which revealed a preview of the ecology on earth just when the mass extinction of the dinosaurs happened. The researchers found certain evidence that suggested that the climate of the region was also warmer and wetter than it is in the present times.

"From this, we were able to reconstruct what the Cretaceous forests looked like with and without fire disturbance," said Hans Larsson of McGill University.

Forest fires affect the biodiversity of both plants and animals. The finding of ancient recovery of ecology from a forest fire will help to broaden the understanding of the scientists of the biodiversity immediately before the mass extinction of dinosaurs. "We won't be able to fully understand the extinction dynamics until we understand what normal ecological processes were going on in the background," says Larsson.

This study provides another clue towards the ecology just before the dinosaurs went extinct.

Emily Bamforth, the first author of the study of the Royal Saskatchewan Museum said they were looking at the direct result of a 66-million-year old forest fire, preserved in stone.

The discovery also revealed that at the site of the forest fire, plants are dominated by a kind of flora which is quite similar to the one that begins the forest recovery after a fire in the present time.