Flowering plants survived Earth’s worst disasters, including the asteroid strike that ended the dinosaurs, while many others vanished. A sweeping genomic analysis suggests ancient DNA doubling may have helped them endure upheaval, opening a new window on resilience in a warming world. Sixty-six million years ago, a giant asteroid slammed into Earth and changed life forever. The impact wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs and devastated ecosystems across the planet. Fires spread, sunlight dimmed and food chains collapsed. Yet somehow, many flowering plants survived. A new study from Ghent University suggests those survivors may have carried a hidden advantage deep inside their DNA. Researchers found that many flowering plants endured ancient climate catastrophes after accidentally duplicating their entire genomes. The findings come from one of the largest analyses ever conducted on flowering plant genomes. Scientists studied 470 species and traced ancient genome duplication events across more than 100 million years of plant evolution. Their results revealed a striking pattern. Many successful genome duplications appeared during periods of severe environmental turmoil, including mass extinctions, rapid warming events …