10 Things You Never Knew Survived the Chicxulub Asteroid

This space rock impacted Earth about 66 million years ago, causing the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, also known as the K-Pg event. The latter famously killed off the non-avian dinosaurs and 75% of all other species. However, not all was lost. From your morning cup of coffee to non-avian dinosaurs that thrived for thousands of years, here are ten notable Chicxulub survivors.

Related: 10 strange creatures that lived next to the dinosaurs

10 Cockroaches

This one is no surprise. These goobers are legendary for resisting any attempt to eradicate them. Yet this is a challenging survival story. When the asteroid hit, cockroaches faced a hellish environment of mega-earthquakes and floods, volcanic eruptions and more. By the time the dust settled, three-quarters of all plant and animal species had disappeared forever.

Cockroaches were among the lucky few who survived both the strike and its aftermath. It turned out that they were well equipped for the situation. While some cockroaches undoubtedly burned in the immediate aftermath of the impact, their small, flat bodies allowed many more to safely hide in small crevices that protected them from the heat.

The rock threw up so much dust that it darkened the sky and caused a long winter. More plants died and the struggling survivors who depended on them starved to death. No cockroaches. As scavengers who ate everything, they had plenty of food. Furthermore, cockroach eggs are extremely strong and likely protect the next generation in the harsh times that followed.^[1]

9 Roses

The roses we see today are not the same ones that bloomed in prehistoric times. But the plant family they belong to, Roaceae, was among the countless angiosperms (flowering plants) that grew on Earth millions of years before the K-Pg event. The world before the asteroid was indeed a flowery paradise.

After the impact, things only got better for flowers. It is believed that angiosperm development exploded as a direct result of the disaster and led to the evolution of today’s approximately 290,000 flowering species.

The survival of these plants is a mystery. Unlike dinosaurs, angiosperms are vulnerable and cannot defend themselves or run away from a dangerous situation. Even the sunlight they needed to survive was blocked for years after the impact. But strangely enough, the dinosaurs died out and the flowers bloomed.^[2]

8 Snakes

When dinosaurs walked the Earth, they never had to avoid vipers and cobras. Boas and pythons did not strangle anything, nor did tree and sea snakes bite any creature. How come? These snakes did not exist.

Before the K-Pg mass extinction, snakes slithered around, but they were different. Most notably, the shape of their vertebrae was distinct and unique, and this ancient design is no longer present in modern snakes. The fossil record shows that these Cretaceous creatures were literally hit hard when the asteroid hit. Only a handful survived.

But they were a fertile couple. Despite the environmental challenges that followed the disaster, these primitive snakes thrived and filled almost every ecological niche, becoming the ancestors of more than 3,000 snake species today.^[3]

7 Deep sea creatures

The K-Pg event left many questions. One of the most enduring mysteries was this: how did deep-sea organisms survive the catastrophe? Indeed, ocean life offered no protection from the asteroid’s effects, and the die-off was catastrophic. About 60% of all marine life died and countless species became extinct.

But despite the acid rain falling on the oceans, the dust blocking sunlight and the collapse of a crucial food chain that once served seabed animals, the latter persisted. In 2016, researchers realized that this was not the real image. They found strong evidence that certain types of bacteria and algae, essential ingredients in the ‘lost’ food chain, had survived the terrible conditions.

These bacteria and algae lived in the upper layers of the ocean, but often sank to the seabed. This provided deep-sea creatures with a steady trickle of food that saw them through the disaster.^[4]

6 Solenodon

Many people have never heard of or seen a solenodon. Once they do, they are rarely disappointed. Measuring 49 to 72 cm, this small animal resembles a scruffy shrew with a trunk-like nose. The cute face hides a secret: the solenodon is poisonous. The saliva is so poisonous that one bite can kill a mouse in minutes.

Recently, scientists have analyzed the DNA of the Hispaniolan solenodon, a highly endangered resident of Cuba and the island of Hispaniola, where it has lived in isolation for millions of years. The study aimed to settle a debate: Did these critters evolve before or after the asteroid hit Earth?

Gene viewing told an interesting story. It proved that solenodons split from other mammals 73.6 million years ago – long before the ancient cataclysm. As a bonus, the genetic study also discovered that the Hispaniolan solenodon was actually two animals, which split from themselves and created a subspecies about 300,000 years ago.^[5]

5 Honey bees

When bees were found in dinosaur-era amber, researchers discovered that the ancient insects were virtually identical to modern honey bees. This strongly suggested that one was the direct ancestor of the other. While this likely put honeybees on the list of asteroid survivors, this familial link has spawned a controversial mystery.

The problem is this. Tropical honey bees need temperatures between 31 and 34 °C to live. Current research shows that the long winter that followed the impact should have wiped out any bees lucky enough to have escaped the asteroid’s initial devastation.

The fact that bees roam today proves that some unknown factor prevented their extinction. But why is the mystery so controversial? Since none of the bees could have survived the years of cold and darkness, this suggests that something is wrong with the established K-Pg nuclear winter theory. ^[6]

4 Coffee

If the asteroid had destroyed a certain plant, espresso and cappuccino would no longer exist today. This plant would later grow into coffee and other useful crops, including potatoes, tomatoes and mint.

The fact that coffee was nearly eradicated before it was even coffee didn’t scare caffeine-loving scientists. Why? For a long time, researchers believed that the precursor to coffee only evolved after the K-Pg event. They were wrong.

Brian Atkinson, curator of paleobotany, recently found a fossil fruit at the Sierra College Museum of Natural History in California. The moment he saw it, he realized the magnitude of his discovery. It was a Cretaceous lamiid or coffee ancestor that once lived with the dinosaurs.

The new species, called Palaeophytocrene chicoensisbelonged to a well-known plant family that was abundant after the catastrophe, but not even a single specimen had been found before the disaster – until now.

At 80 million years old, the fruit proved that the origin of lamiids was not something post-asteroid. Instead, they appeared about 20 million years before the star’s impact. Today, lamiids have evolved into thousands of species.^[7]

3 Sharks

The prize for avoiding the most mass extinctions goes to sharks. During their 400 million year existence, sharks have survived five catastrophic extinction events. The last was the K-Pg event.

When scientists wanted to understand how severely the asteroid had affected elasmobranch species, including sharks, rays and skates, the study looked at fossils from around the world. Ultimately, they narrowed the number down to 675 specimens of sharks and their relatives that lived around the time of the impact.

The fossils painted a brutal picture. About 62% of all elasmobranch species were eradicated. Among them, 59% of shark species became extinct, and rays were even worse hit, losing as much as 72% of their diversity.

Interestingly, the fossils showed that ancient shark species were less likely to survive the K-Pg event and its aftermath. Younger shark species, especially those that lived in the open ocean and had large territories, were more likely to survive.^[8]

2 Ancestors of dogs and humans

All living mammals today are placentals, or animals that develop a placenta during pregnancy. The only mammals excluded from this club are marsupials (such as kangaroos) and monotremes (an example is the platypus) because they do not grow placentas.

Just before the K-Pg event, several large mammalian groups evolved in the placenta. These include Primates, Lagomorpha and Carnivora. Respectively, they were the ancestors of modern humans, rabbits and dogs. For a short time they ran with dinosaurs, but then the asteroid arrived and killed the dinosaurs, but not the placental mammals.

Because so many ecological niches were left empty by the dinosaurs, mammals quickly diversified to fill them. They began to develop into all modern placental lineages. This leaves a frightening thought. If the asteroid had wiped out the placentas or failed to pave the way for their evolution, humans might never have existed.^[9]

1 Non-avian dinosaurs

Most articles or books about the K-Pg event state that the asteroid wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs. However, contrary to popular belief, the dinosaur age did not end with the deadly impact. One population of animals subsequently managed to survive for a staggering amount of time.

A fossilized leg bone belonging to a hadrosaur was recently found in New Mexico. Also called duck-billed dinosaurs because of their flat, toothless snouts, they walked upright on powerful hind legs and consumed plant matter.

When the bone was tested, a remarkably lost piece of history was rediscovered. This hadrosaur had died 700,000 years after the asteroid impact. This means that enough hadrosaurs had survived the mass extinction to continue as a species and that Earth still had dinosaurs for the better part of a million years after they were all supposedly extinct.^[10]