Posted on 09/18/2023 9:36:34 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Ever wonder why the dinosaurs disappeared? HHMI BioInteractive investigates the cause of the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period—and the clues come from paleontology, chemistry, physics, and biology.
This three-act film tells the story of the extraordinary detective work that solved one of the greatest scientific mysteries of all time. Explore the fossil evidence of these prehistoric animals, and other organisms that went extinct, through this lively educational video.The Day the Mesozoic Died: The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs — HHMI BioInteractive Video | 33:50
biointeractive | 237K subscribers | 14,149,800 views | August 26, 2014
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
The rest of the Mesozoic keyword, sorted:
Call Don McLean, he could write a song about it...............
Some of them got smooshed.
I once read that the seismic shock wave of the asteroid, or the thump of its hitting the ground, would have been strong enough to fracture the hips of any large dinosaur standing in the western hemisphere.
Many years ago I read an article in an astronomy magazine about ‘terra-forming,’ that speculated an asteroid was guided to earth by an intelligent civilization. Then it was colonized by it and other forms.
Interesting take on history. Good beer talk.
Transcript here:
https://www.biointeractive.org/sites/default/files/day-mesozoic-died-printable-transcript.pdf
good stuff...
Thanks! The auto-generated transcript button got moved into the description part of each vid, but this one was marked unavailable when I asked for it. :^)
Many decades ago, I remember seeing a single panel cartoon in a magazine, like Look or The Saturday Evening Post, or Playboy, that had a pair of aliens cleaning out their spaceship, and dumping their garbage on the barren planet we now call Earth, and the caption was something like “How ‘Life on Earth’ started............
Had to dig into the resources link, grab my pith helmet and find it.
No mention of T. Rex and the Crater of Doom.
LOL
I read that one back when, also another one (title escapes me right now) with a higher reading level, and around the same time "Rain of Iron and Ice" which is more general about large impacts. I picked up a book off remainder that claimed to prove that it was impossible, that was unintentionally amusing. There is also an edited anthology about the whole impact extinction discussion, it's around here somewhere. The evidence pro has continued to pile up, while the naysayers continue to die off.
I noticed that, near the end, one of those interviewed claimed the impact model doesn't weaken "survival of the fittest", which of course, it does -- it eliminates it.
Morphologically determined speciation seen in both the fossil and living record comes from the accumulation of mutations and from nothing else.
Extinction on the other hand comes from relatively sudden changes in environment, including introduction of new predators, but also natural climate change and impacts from space.
This is all well and good, but it doesn’t explain why the small dinosaurs didn’t survive. Many were as small as chickens or sammer and didn’t require massive amounts of food. Mammals of various sizes and many large reptiles survived as well.
The small dinosaurs did survive, some of them. They’re called birds.
“Ever wonder why the dinosaurs disappeared? “
The cave men/women/sexually confused at all of them.
So Gubbio is famous for three things—Walter Alvarez’ discovery there involving the K-T boundary, St. Francis and the wolf, and the ancient Iguvium tablets in the Umbrian language.
There weren’t many small dinos. The temperature swing due to the impact (the entire atmosphere was heated way up, then the dust and soot cover blacked out sunlight worldwide for at least a few years) did in a lot of critters, including, apparently, all of the dinos, irrespective of their size. Mammals of the era burrowed and could hunker down for protection, including from the temperature swings. It would be surprising if the mammals of that time were nocturnal, while the dinos were largely diurnal. Years of darkness gave nocturnal critters an edge.
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