Dinosaur mass grave discovered in Switzerland (Plateosaurus bones in abundance in the FRick area?)

Reuters on Yahoo ^ | 8/9/07 | Reuters

[NormsRevenge]

ZURICH (Reuters) - An amateur paleontologist in Switzerland may have unearthed Europe's largest dinosaur mass grave after he dug up the remains of two Plateosaurus.

The dinosaurs' bones came to light during house-building in the village of Frick, near the German border.

"A hobby paleontologist looked at a construction site for a house and happened to discover the bones," said Monica Ruembeli from the Frick dinosaur museum.

The finds show that an area known for Plateosaurus finds for decades may be much larger than originally thought.

"It could be that the area extends for 1.5 kilometers (0.9 miles) and in that case, you could certainly say it's the biggest site in Europe," said Martin Sander, a dinosaur paleontologist at the university of Bonn in Germany.

The Frick area contained the bones of one animal per 100 square meters, Sander said, so the entire area might contain bones of 100 more Plateosaurus.

The peaceful herbivore -- measuring up to 10 meters from head to tail -- roamed river deltas in large herds some 210 million years ago, according to some scientists, when most of Switzerland was covered with desert and its landscape may have looked much like the estuary of the Nile now.

There are two other large Plateosaurus sites in Germany, Sander said. It is not known how big they are because one is covered by the town of Halberstadt and the other, near Trossingen, by a forest.

[martin_fierro]

They appear to get along well with kids.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Don’t tell me—it’s Bush’s fault?!

[dblshot]

“largest dinosaur mass grave”

Blame it on Saddamasauros Rex

[Sacajaweau]

I look at those critters and think "God gone wild".

Reason for their extinction...while others "made it"??

[af_vet_rr]

Reason for their extinction...while others "made it"??

There's a lot of theories, but basically atmospheric and physical. Regardless of what camp you fall into as far as the extinction events, and your views on warm-blooded/cold-blooded dinosaurs, it's pretty clear dinosaurs probably weren't suited for colder weather (if I recall correctly, there were no polar ice caps during much of their reign as it were).

I've heard that due to the large size of many, that even slight changes in the atmosphere, especially Oxygen levels, would impact them a lot more than the smaller critters.

I don't think you can point at one event and say "that's it".

It's lucky for us, our ancestors probably had their hands full as it was, throwing dinos in the mix would have changed everything.

[MarkBsnr]

It’s Bush’s fault.

Retroactive global warming was the real reason.

[JRios1968]

That’s Fricky!

[Rudder]

Europe's largest dinosaur mass grave...

If they had discovered human remains instead it would have been called a ritual.

[mondeoman]

210 million years is, well, a very, very long time indeed. Isn’t it amazing that a simple dig of a few meters produced the remains of these animals so close to the surface of the earth? The quoted paleontologist is rambling on about the horizontal distribution of the bones, but doesn’t deal with the main point: the elite main-stream media scientists have been WRONG about the giant lizards preceding man on the “evolutionary” time scale.
It’s much more reasonable to assume that the dinos lived concurrently with man and became extinct after the deluge, or possibly because none were taken into the ark (Noah probably wanted to take them in but the Mrs. said there’s a limit to everything and it’s either me or the dinosaurs).