It's hard to start writing a story and keep telling new chapters in it for decades.

This is not the case for the asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago, creating a Chicxulub crater in the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, which is still telling us new chapters in the life story.

Although the asteroid collision plunged the Earth into complete darkness, its hands on the tropical rainforests are now telling us a new chapter of life.

In a recent study published in the journal Science on April 2, scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute shed light on the origins of modern rainforests to understand how they respond to rapid climate change.

The study - which the Smithsonian Institution commented on in its press release - showed that this impact, which ended the era of the dinosaurs, had also caused the extinction of 45% of the plants in the current Columbia region.

This gave way to the flowering plants found in modern tropical rainforests.

At first, the team asked, "How did the tropical rain forests change after the Chicksolub incident, which disrupted the balance of ecosystems," says Monica Carvalho, first author of the study.

Asteroid impacts cleared the way for flowering plants to appear in tropical forests (Euric Allert - Beth King)

Before and after the disaster

As Carvallo recalls, the team "searched for any fossils of tropical plants. They examined more than 50,000 pollen fossils, and over 6,000 fossils of plant leaves dating back to before and after the accident."

These fossils were collected from 39 different sites in Colombia, in order to paint a large picture of the shape of the forest before and after the accident.

Fossils of pollen and spores - collected from rocks older than the incident - showed that ferns and flowering plants dominated the rainforest environment equally, and conifers were also common.

After the Chicksolub incident, conifers completely disappeared from the tropics, while flowering plants took their place in the New World.

Plant diversity did not recover again until 10 million years after the accident.

Most tropical forests have become dense trees millions of years after the accident (Pixabay)

Fossil plant fossils also provided evidence of tropical forest trees diverging before the accident, allowing light to penetrate through them until it reached the surface of the earth.

And within 10 million years after the accident, most tropical forests became tree-laden as we see today.

The leaves and branches of large trees cast a shadow over the young trees.

Consequently, these divergent vegetation covers - which were present before the accident - helped the evaporation of less water in the soil into the atmosphere, compared to what was caused by the dense forests that spread over millions of years after the accident.

The team found no evidence of legume trees before the accident.

But they found great variety and abundance of legume leaves after the accident.

Today, legumes dominate tropical rainforests, and they and the bacteria associated with them play a role in fixing nitrogen in the soil.

Insect damage before and after the accident

Scientists were interested in studying the damage caused by insects to plant leaves.

They found that each type of plant experienced a different type of damage prior to the accident, meaning that the insect food was more specialized.

On the contrary, all plants sustained the same type of damage after the accident, which means that the insects' feeding was not limited to certain types of plants.

Dinosaurs spread trees by feeding on them and moving between them (Pixabay)

So, how did those scattered tropical forests rich in pines transform - during the era of the dinosaurs - in the pre-disaster era into what we are witnessing today of rainforests interspersed with tall and dense trees colored with colorful flowers

Based on the evidence provided by fossils of pollen and plant leaves, scientists believe there are three answers to this question.

Either the dinosaurs are the reason for the spacing and scattering of trees by feeding on them and moving between them.

Or the fly ash left over from the accident enriched the soil, helping the fastest growing plants - such as flowering plants - to thrive.

Or that the extinction of some conifers has given way to flowering plants to thrive in the tropics.