In the book, Ward argues that dinosaurs became the monsters that ruled the Earth for more than 60 million years – and survived mass extinctions that destroyed many other species – because they developed respiratory systems far more efficient than other terrestrial creatures.
Out of Thin Air:
Dinosaurs, Birds, And
Earth's Ancient Atmosphere
by Peter Douglas Ward
I had read somewheres that O2 content might have been as high as 30 percent during the time of the great lizards.
I had an email contact last week with a scientist who studies these things and asked him about dissolved O2 in the oceans. He said that's fairly negligible amount. But water high in the atmosphere gets broken up into Hydrogen (which escapes) and Oxygen which stays behind.
Don't know if there is any reliable estimate of how much. But it's interesting that solar weather can have that kind of effect.
