A study recently published in Nature challenges the prevailing wisdom that the extinction of the dinosaurs paved the way for an explosion of mammalian diversity.  By studying the fossils of a group of mammals called multituberculates, the researchers have cast doubt on the traditional view of dinosaurs constraining small, shrew-like mammals to a secondary role as nocturnal insectivores. Instead, this group seems to have diversified millions of years before the dinosaurs died out.
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