Two “paleonerds” embark on a roadtrip across the West in search of fossils.
The new …
When I quizzed artists as to why they were painting bare earth, they told me that paleobotanists had forbidden them from using grass because it didn't involve evolve until the dinosaurs had gone extinct. Remove the grass and you're left with bare earth. This prompts the question "What was the ground cover in the Cretaceous?"
— Cruisin' the Fossil Freeway by Kirk Johnson, Ray Troll (Page 77)
TIL that grass is younger than dinosaurs. Wikipedia tells me there is some overlap between dinosaurs and grass, but grass largely evolved later. Johnson goes on to describe plants like buttercups, nettles and hops.
