Reply to: Question about dinosaurs

[expat]

I thought the dinosaur fossils were put there by god to test our faith?

And if you believe that, I have a bridge here to sell...

[FSM with Cheddar]

I thought the dinosaur fossils were put there by god to test our faith?

[expat]

The fossil records has gaps of millions of years. The most recent fossil before KT that's not found after KT is still many thousand, if not hundreds of thousands of years bwefore KT. It could be inferred that they all died out actual at the time of the KT layer, and that sound sensible. But it's still an open question and there are other theories.

The fossil record doesn't deal in such short timescales.

And it's not K-T any more, "Tertiary" is deprecated in favour of Cenozoic, so it's K-Cn or something like that. Oh well, I did Palaeontology in 1971 so I'm a bit of a dinosaur myself

[NotAllThere]

My understanding is that the extinction event that killed the dinos shows in fossil records as wiping them out in a short period of time, certainly not millions of years?

The fossil records has gaps of millions of years. The most recent fossil before KT that's not found after KT is still many thousand, if not hundreds of thousands of years bwefore KT. It could be inferred that they all died out actual at the time of the KT layer, and that sound sensible. But it's still an open question and there are other theories.

[AlfredJPruffock]

Grass was invented during the plasticene era as a response to the cooling of the Ozone layer, which in turn was affected by the Atlantic conveyor, which is somwhere near the Falklands I think.
Class B grass became more common as class C grass became extinct, due to a meteor that landed in Siberia.

Correct however as Class B Grass becaome more widespread the Dinosaurs discoered that adding Tobacco would make it go that bit further - shortly after this they stumbled upon an IBM MVS system believed to have originated from outsdie the Solar System - thus their fate was sealed.

[Purple Dalek]

Interesting - never heard that before but makes sense. I did know that the World was going through a process of becoming considerably less hot & wet prior to the meteor so that Dinosaurs were somewhat passe by the time of the meteor. Didn't grass evolve at that time?

I much prefer the theory that the plants changed and the dinosaurs all died of constipation.

[EternalOptimist]

Didn't grass evolve at that time?

Grass was invented during the plasticene era as a response to the cooling of the Ozone layer, which in turn was affected by the Atlantic conveyor, which is somwhere near the Falklands I think.
Class B grass became more common as class C grass became extinct, due to a meteor that landed in Siberia.

[ace00]

................
Back then it was thought that the oxygen content of air was far greater than what it is today, allowing such massive creatures to evolve.

Most of this O2 was consumed because of some global event, leaving only the those creatures that required less O2 behind.

Essentially the dinosaurs suffocated.

Interesting - never heard that before but makes sense. I did know that the World was going through a process of becoming considerably less hot & wet prior to the meteor so that Dinosaurs were somewhat passe by the time of the meteor. Didn't grass evolve at that time?

[gingerjedi]

armysniper72 has the best answer

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/in...5053829AAe6LTS

If you ever need to google something there's a cast iron guarantee that you will find the most moronic answers on Yahoo! …I wondered what ATW had been up to lately?

[FSM with Cheddar]

Anyway there is no tree of life any more, so perhaps a dung beetle made sweet love with a dinosaur and out popped a crocodile

[FSM with Cheddar]

The crocodiles, alligators and kimono dragons did actually become extinct at the same time as dinosaurs. They then re-evolved from dung beetles.

Didn't dung beetles evolve from worm eating beetles?

[EternalOptimist]

The crocodiles, alligators and kimono dragons did actually become extinct at the same time as dinosaurs. They then re-evolved from dung beetles.

[expat]

Same as the IT market now.

New Labour is the extinction event.

New Labour is an Outside Context Problem (OCP) for IT Contracting, the kind of problem "most civilisations would encounter just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop."

"The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests."

[BoredBloke]

I'd heard that they survived because of 2 things.

1 - they will happily eat rotten or rotting meat
2 - once they have eaten they don't need to eat again for about a year

[Ruprect]

You need to visit the British museum DP.

Back then it was thought that the oxygen content of air was far greater than what it is today, allowing such massive creatures to evolve.

Most of this O2 was consumed because of some global event, leaving only the those creatures that required less O2 behind.

Essentially the dinosaurs suffocated.

Were they all driving 4x4s?