Colored Drawing (Simple) - Ditchland by YellowPanda2001 on DeviantArt (original) (raw)

Over the last 80 million years, Zealandia has proven to have been isolated from any other mainland, since it got separated from Australia and Antarctica. However, it has left a large chunk that has risen over the ocean during its early times. This is the so called Ditchland, that sits just between New Zealand and Australia. During the late Cretaceous, this piece of land was still very much connected to New Zealand, harbouring a fantastic myriad of creatures, some which we didn't even knew existed in that part of the world at that time. That naturally included non-avialan dinosaurs. However, the K-Pg extinction event happened, which proved specially harsh for the non-avialan dinosaur fauna of the world. However, in Ditchland, a select few seem to have survived, including a group of basal omnivorous paravians and a small clade of neornithischians. Over the course of the Cenozoic, non-avialan dinosaurs, both on Ditchland and New Zealand. However, by the Oligocene-Miocene, most of Zealandia sank, leaving a lot of land to essentially be dinosaurless once it rose back again (not including birds of course). The exception was the Ditchland, which has, since that event, been completely isolated from New Zealand, and now harbours the only place in the world where non-avialan dinosaurs still exist and proliferate.