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LiveScience
LiveScience
Patrick Pester

Night lizards survived dinosaur-killing asteroid strike, despite being close enough to see it happen

A close-up of a black lizard with yellow spots.

Mysterious night lizards survived the giant asteroid strike that ended the reign of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, despite living right next to the impact site, a new study finds.

Thanks to a new evolutionary analysis, researchers discovered that the little lizards, in the family Xantusiidae, were living around the Gulf of Mexico before and after the asteroid struck what is now Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. This makes night lizards the only group of land vertebrates known to have survived close to the impact location, and still have members living in the region today.

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