A new research has suggested that that one of Saturn's inner rings, called the C ring, might have formed around the same time as dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

Scientists have along been attempting to calculate a specific age of Saturn's rings, which have mostly been made up of water ice chunks. Micrometeoroids from the outer solar system's Kuiper belt are also present there. The ratio of these two ingredients could help estimate the planet's age, but it has proven vague.

But, a study of the average micrometeoroid flux allowed researchers to reach a rough age of the planet's C ring. They examined information about the C ring, provided by the Cassini spacecraft, and found that the ring is 15 to100 million years old.

According to the new study, Saturn's C ring is billions of years younger than scientists' previously estimated age for the ring.

Study author Zhimeng Zhang, a researcher from Cornell University, said, "None of the current origin scenarios predict the rings are likely younger than 3.8 billion years old. This will force a rethinking of ring origin models."

The new research published in the most recent edition of Icarus, a scientific journal devoted to the field of planetary science.