<p>Most people know that land-dwelling dinosaurs were wiped out some 66 million years ago when an asteroid roughly twice the diameter of Paris crashed into Earth.</p>.<p>If the explosive fireball didn't get them, the plunge in global temperature on a planet with little or no ice -- caused by a blanket of heat-shielding debris in the atmosphere -- did.</p>.<p>What most people don't know is that more than 100 million years earlier, another climate change cataclysm devastated a different set of dinosaur species, with many going extinct.</p>.<p>Except, this time, it was global warming rather than global cooling that did them in, with the planet heating up more quickly than the dinos' capacity to adapt.</p>.<p>Scientists have found evidence of this traumatic event some 179 million years ago in plant fossils in Argentine Patagonia.</p>.<p>They also discovered a previously unknown dinosaur.</p>.<p>The species, called Bagualia alba, is in the family of massive, long-necked sauropods, the largest animals to walk the Earth.</p>.<p>Before the global warming event, sauropods were only one branch of the Sauropodomorpha lineage.</p>.<p>Other dinosaurs in the same group were smaller and lightly built, with some no bigger than a goat, according to a study published Wednesday in the Royal Society.</p>.<p>But a series of volcanic eruptions over several million years released huge amounts of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, warming the planet and transforming the vegetation dinosaurs fed on.</p>.<p>The climate went from a temperate, warm and humid with a diverse lush vegetation to a strongly seasonal, hot-and-dry regime.</p>.<p>Smaller Sauropodomorpha dinosaurs were unable to cope with the change, but larger sauropods -- like the Bagualia alba -- thrived.</p>.<p>"Sauropods are massive, four-legged animals with long necks," which meant they could reach the tops of trees, palaeontologist and lead author Diego Pol told AFP.</p>.<p>"Their very robust mandibles and spoon-shaped teeth were adapted to feed on all kinds of plants such as conifer trees."</p>.<p>Conifers in the early Jurassic had tough and leathery leaves that would be a challenge for any herbivore.</p>.<p>But that gave B. alba an advantage over other Sauropodomorpha dinosaurs, said Pol, head of the science department at the Egidio Feruglio palaeontology museum in Patagonia.</p>.<p>Sauropods' new diet saw them expanded in size from 10 metres to 40 metres in length, as large digestion chambers were needed to cope.</p>.<p>They became the dominant group of herbivores and eventually the largest animals to ever walk the Earth.</p>
<p>Most people know that land-dwelling dinosaurs were wiped out some 66 million years ago when an asteroid roughly twice the diameter of Paris crashed into Earth.</p>.<p>If the explosive fireball didn't get them, the plunge in global temperature on a planet with little or no ice -- caused by a blanket of heat-shielding debris in the atmosphere -- did.</p>.<p>What most people don't know is that more than 100 million years earlier, another climate change cataclysm devastated a different set of dinosaur species, with many going extinct.</p>.<p>Except, this time, it was global warming rather than global cooling that did them in, with the planet heating up more quickly than the dinos' capacity to adapt.</p>.<p>Scientists have found evidence of this traumatic event some 179 million years ago in plant fossils in Argentine Patagonia.</p>.<p>They also discovered a previously unknown dinosaur.</p>.<p>The species, called Bagualia alba, is in the family of massive, long-necked sauropods, the largest animals to walk the Earth.</p>.<p>Before the global warming event, sauropods were only one branch of the Sauropodomorpha lineage.</p>.<p>Other dinosaurs in the same group were smaller and lightly built, with some no bigger than a goat, according to a study published Wednesday in the Royal Society.</p>.<p>But a series of volcanic eruptions over several million years released huge amounts of CO2 and methane in the atmosphere, warming the planet and transforming the vegetation dinosaurs fed on.</p>.<p>The climate went from a temperate, warm and humid with a diverse lush vegetation to a strongly seasonal, hot-and-dry regime.</p>.<p>Smaller Sauropodomorpha dinosaurs were unable to cope with the change, but larger sauropods -- like the Bagualia alba -- thrived.</p>.<p>"Sauropods are massive, four-legged animals with long necks," which meant they could reach the tops of trees, palaeontologist and lead author Diego Pol told AFP.</p>.<p>"Their very robust mandibles and spoon-shaped teeth were adapted to feed on all kinds of plants such as conifer trees."</p>.<p>Conifers in the early Jurassic had tough and leathery leaves that would be a challenge for any herbivore.</p>.<p>But that gave B. alba an advantage over other Sauropodomorpha dinosaurs, said Pol, head of the science department at the Egidio Feruglio palaeontology museum in Patagonia.</p>.<p>Sauropods' new diet saw them expanded in size from 10 metres to 40 metres in length, as large digestion chambers were needed to cope.</p>.<p>They became the dominant group of herbivores and eventually the largest animals to ever walk the Earth.</p>