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The popular theory of an asteroid as the demise of the dinosaurs has been cast into doubt because of a new study published in the journalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

While a massive asteroid really did hit earth 66 million years ago, it was just the final push for an already failing species, rather than the main event.

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Researches from the University of Bristol and the University of Reading found “overwhelming support” that dinosaur populations were already in a steady decline leading up to the Cretaceous–Paleogene mass extinction event — the proper name for the asteroid’s impact.

Researchers looked at the number of dinosaur fossils over a few hundred million years and found that around 90 million years ago, the dinos began to die.

“Our results highlight that dinosaurs showed a marked reduction in their ability to replace extinct species with new ones, making them vulnerable to extinction and unable to respond quickly to and recover from the final catastrophic event 66 Mya,” the researchers wrote.