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Posted on 12/04/2009 11:26:36 PM PST by SunkenCiv
The cool climate of Antarctica was a refuge for animals fleeing climate change during the biggest mass extinction in Earth's history, suggests a new fossil study. The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming.
Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period, about 90 per cent of land species were wiped out as global temperatures soared. A cat-sized distant relative of mammals, Kombuisia antarctica, seems to have survived the extinction by fleeing south to Antarctica.
Jörg Fröbisch, a geologist at the Field Museum in Chicago, and colleagues rediscovered fossils of K. antarctica dating from the end of the Permian among specimens collected from Antarctica over 30 years ago. The fossil hoard had been assembled for the American Museum of Natural History as evidence of the existence of the ancient supercontinent Pangaea, in which all today's continents were locked together in one land mass.
Analysis of two skulls belonging to K. antarctica suggest it was a small herbivore, no more than 40 centimetres in length. Though more closely related to mammals than to reptiles, its lifestyle was distinctly reptilian: it laid eggs and had a horny, turtle-like beak. Fossils of close relatives have been found in South Africa, so it probably lived throughout south Pangaea before the mass extinction.
(Excerpt) Read more at newscientist.com ...
Asteroid 'destroyed life 250m years ago'Earth's biggest mass extinction 251 million years ago was triggered by a collision with a comet or asteroid, US scientists say. They have reached this conclusion by looking at atoms from a star trapped inside molecular cages of carbon...
by Dr David Whitehouse
Friday, February 23, 2001
In rock layers laid down at the time, there is a much higher concentration of complex carbon molecules called fullerenes that have different types, or isotopes, of helium and argon trapped inside them. These molecules could only have been delivered from space, the researchers say...
The researchers believe these particular fullerenes are extraterrestrial because the gases trapped inside have an unusual ratio of isotopes that indicate they were made in the atmosphere of a star that exploded before our Sun was born...
The telltale fullerenes were extracted from sites in Japan, China and Hungary, where the sedimentary layer at the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods had been exposed...
The research was made difficult because there are few 251-million-year-old rocks left on Earth. Most rocks of that age have been recycled through the planet's tectonic processes...
Researchers estimate the comet or asteroid was six to 12 km (3.7 - 7.4 miles) across, or about the size of the asteroid believed responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs 67 million years ago...
The mass extinction of 251 million years ago was the greatest on record.
There's also an impact crater buried under eastern Antarctica. The crater is about the size of the state of Ohio, and the asteroid that caused it was probably 30 miles wide. That event also dates from the P/T boundary. Either of them would have been hefty enough to cause worldwide climatic instability lasting for milennia, not to mention the initial cascade of firestorms resulting from ejecta falling bath onto Earth. And the locations of both creaters might have been sufficent to give the opposite side of the world (Siberia at that time) a hefty boot from below. Any putative Siberian magma chambers existing then could conceivable have moved closer to the surface and/or actually broken out, yielding the Siberian Traps as we know them.
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Scientists are constantly ruling out God in their theories. The climate change that froze Antarctica, and the fossils found there, were caused by the world-wide flood of Noah’s day. The earth’s temperature before then was virtually uniform due to “the expanse” above the earth that acted as an insulator.
Creatively mixing science with mythology is the essence of the “New Scientist”.
The discovery may have implications for how modern animals will adapt to global warming.
In such a way that maximizes funding, thereby increasing global warming?
Your link is no mas.
New Crater Found Down Under April 2000
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a390081092974.htm
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/sydney_crater_000421.html
This is clearly Bush's fault. He went back in time and brought with him a large fleet of SUVs to pollute the atmosphere.
There are a few theories why the extinction happened. I go with the huge volcanic flows in Siberia.(Graphic shows how continents have moved over the last 250 million years)
Tracking back the therapsids on Wiki I see that in addition to the well-known P/T (Permian / Triassic) catastrophe which marks the end of the early synapsid dominance and the famous K/T (Cretaceous / Tertiary) calamity which marked the end of the dinosaurs, it is now thought there was another extinction event, the T/J (Triassic / Jurassic) event. This event is thought to have been slightly less harmful than the K/T event. It marks the disappearance of the non-mammalian therapsids and the large non-dinosaurian members of the archosaur group. As of now they have no evidence of the cause.
Impact. :’) BTW, very nice graphic, I’m stealin’ it.
Thanks!
I noticed that when I went to save it. :’)
New Fossils Suggest Ancient Cat-sized Reptiles in Antarctica
LiveScience.com on Yahoo | 6/7/08 | Jeanna Bryner
Posted on 06/07/2008 7:53:24 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2027763/posts
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