Understanding the human body is a team effort. That's where the Yachtel group comes in.

Researchers at Yachtolt have been delving into the secrets of probiotics for 90 years.

Yacold also partners with nature portfolio to advance gut microbiome science through the global grants for gut health, an investigator-led research program.

To learn more about Yachtolt, visit yawcult.co.

.jp. That's Y-A-K-U-L-T.C-O.J-P. When it comes to a guide for your gut, count on Yacolt.

This is Scientific American 60 Second Science. I'm Christopher Ndalata. Got a minute?

66 million years ago, the Chick-Shula meteorite, a rock over six miles wide, slammed into the earth.

And you know what happened next. The dino's disappeared. But Benjamin Blonder, a plant ecologist at the University of Arizona, says to consider the big picture for a moment.

You have to think not only about the charismatic animals which are walking on the planet, but also all of the resources on which those animals are depending.

Say, for example, vegetation. Blonder's been giving those overshadowed impact victims they're due.

After all, more than half the plant species in temperate North America perished, along with the dinosaurs.

And the type of plants that thrived after the impact were different as well.

Blonder and his colleagues studied thousands of fossil leaves from North Dakota,

spanning about a million years both before and after the impact.

They measured leaf mass per area, a proxy for how much energy a plant invest in its leaves,

and the density of veins, which indicates how fast-growing the leaf is.

Sturdy, slow-growing leaves tend to be evergreens, whereas flimsy, fast-growing leaves

are a hallmark of deciduous

plants. Turns out that after the impact, the fossil record has more deciduous-looking leaves,

suggesting that fast-growing, more adaptable seasonal plants beat out the competition after the big hit.

The study appears in the journal PLOS Biology, and it kind of makes me wonder if we haven't overlooked another theory for why the dynos died out.

Maybe they just didn't care for the taste of deciduous leaves.

...