Sixty-six million years ago, a mountain-sized asteroid struck Earth with apocalyptic force. It carved out the Chicxulub crater in what is now Mexico, shrouded the planet in fire and dust, and brought an abrupt end to the age of the dinosaurs.

The devastation was nearly total: forests burned, the skies darkened, food chains collapsed. Three out of every four species on Earth vanished.And yet, out of this planetary catastrophe, some of the smallest creatures on Earth not only endured but prospered. Ants, then a minor presence in the insect world, seized the opportunity created by extinction and began their long ascent toward ecological dominance.

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The fossil record tells a humbling story. Ants had already evolved by the mid-Cretaceous, roughly 100 million years ago. But they were ecological footnotes: delicate amber fossils from that time, such as Sphecomyrma, suggest they were rare and specialized. Fewer than one in a hundred insect fossils from this era are ants.

Compare that to today, when ants are among the most abundant animals on land. By some estimates, ants alone represent more than 15 percent of all terrestrial animal biomass — an almost unimaginable figure for creatures so small. Clearly, something dramatic happened in the deep past to propel ants from obscurity to ubiquity.

The Chicxulub impact was catastrophic in every conceivable way. Shockwaves ignited global wildfires. Dust and aerosols blotted out the Sun for months, plunging Earth into an “impact winter.” Plants withered, herbivores starved, and the great carnivores followed.

And yet, ants persisted. Why? Evolution had already equipped them with traits that turned out to be survival superpowers in a collapsing world:

1. Subterranean strongholds – Ants built their lives underground, where soil buffered them from fire, heat, and violent climate swings.
   
   
2. Social resilience – Colonies, unlike solitary insects, spread risk. If workers perished, queens and brood could keep the lineage alive.
   
   
3. Ecological flexibility – Ants were dietary opportunists, consuming seeds, nectar, insects, even fungi or whatever resources remained.
   
   

Vacant ecological space – Once dinosaurs and other dominant animals disappeared, ecosystems reshuffled. Ants were in position to exploit the new opportunities.

In a sense, ants had been rehearsing for catastrophe all along.

Evidence for this evolutionary leap is written in stone and in amber.

• Late Cretaceous fossils reveal a handful of primitive, specialized ants.
  
  
• Post-impact deposits from the early Paleogene show a striking increase in diversity. Suddenly, ants appear in many forms, filling multiple ecological roles.
  
  
• Phylogenetic studies confirm the pattern: most modern ant subfamilies — Formicinae, Myrmicinae, Dolichoderinae — radiated shortly after the asteroid impact.
  
  

It was as if the extinction cleared the stage, and ants rushed forward to fill the empty spotlight.

The story doesn’t end with survival. The recovery of flowering plants after the asteroid’s devastation added fuel to the ants’ evolutionary fire. As angiosperms spread across the planet, ants adapted quickly to their abundance, forging partnerships that endure to this day:

• Seed dispersal (myrmecochory), carrying seeds underground in exchange for food rewards.
  
  
• Nectar harvesting, sipping sugary secretions from flowers and specialized glands.
  
  
• Tending honeydew, protecting sap-sucking insects in return for their sweet excretions.
  
  

The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction was not simply a mass death event; it was also a moment of evolutionary renewal. While it spelled disaster for the dinosaurs, it created a world in which ants could flourish.

Armed with social cooperation, ecological flexibility, and a talent for forming alliances, ants turned adversity into opportunity. From a scattered minority in the Cretaceous, they became the global powerhouses of today in shaping soils, managing forests, and influencing ecosystems on a planetary scale.

• Moreau, C. S., & Bell, C. D. (2013). Testing the museum versus cradle tropical biological diversity hypothesis: phylogeny, diversification, and ancestral biogeographic range evolution of the ants. Evolution, 67(8), 2240–2257.
  
  
• Wilson, E. O., & Hölldobler, B. (2005). The rise of the ants: a phylogenetic and ecological explanation. PNAS, 102(21), 7411–7414.
  
  
• Labandeira, C. C., & Sepkoski, J. J. (1993). Insect diversity in the fossil record. Science, 261(5119), 310–315.
  
  
• Grimaldi, D., & Engel, M. S. (2005). Evolution of the Insects. Cambridge University Press.