'Kitchen science' reveals dinosaurs died in agony

sfgate.com ^ | June 6, 2007 | David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

[SunkenCiv]

EiU, p 222.

[reagan_fanatic]

Dying hurts. Who knew?

[BibChr]

My very thought.

[SunkenCiv]

The problem with that idea is that well-preserved human remains were purposely buried; many (if not most) fossils of extinct forms are found in death assemblages, such as the 10000 dino-critters discovered in Montana by Jack Horner et al.

Early Volcano Victims Discovered
BBC News
Monday, May 3, 1999

Whole communities of ape-like creatures may have been killed in East Africa 18 million years ago by the once active volcano Kisingiri. Proconsul lived in a semi-arid environment close to the mountain and the research suggests they may have been caught by a pyroclastic flow. The abundance of the hominoid fossils may represent "death assemblages" - whole populations wiped out simultaneously by "glowing cloud" eruptions. The fossils of the Rusinga Formation form a crucial link between the early primates of the forest habitats, and human forerunners of the more open-country habitat, who lived in drier conditions than had been supposed, on a landscape that experienced repeated volcanic eruption.

[Mike Darancette]

Dinosaur life was brutish and short.

[Fred Nerks]

EiU p 223:

When, therefore, the earth, covered with mud from the recent flood, became heated up by the hot and genial rays of the sun, she brought forth innumerable forms of life, in part of ancient shapes, and in part creatures new and strange.

-OVID, Metamorphoses

EiU p 19

The same platform in Orkney as at Cromarty is strewed thick with remains, which exhibit unequivocally the marks of violent death. The figures are contorted, contracted, curved; the tail in many instances is bent around to the head; the spines stick out; the fins are spread to the full, as in fish that die in convulsions...

The Fossil Record:

Another very startling finding that demonstrates the sudden/catastrophic burial of very large creatures is a 1971 finding in Southern Mongolia of a perfectly articulated Protoceratops and a Velociraptor frozen in a life and death struggle with each other. Obviously these two creatures were buried suddenly by a huge catastrophe of magnificent proportions. The dinosaurs didn’t even have time to fall over.

[gusopol3]

some sort of preferential preservation like Pompeii( or is it Herculaneum..sorry to offend you on your turf). Thanks for taking the time to inform.

[backslacker]

My gosh! Scientists still haven’t even figured out if dinosaurs were cold-blooded or warm-blooded, and yet they tell us about all of these other details that they supposedly know. What other basic information don’t they know, and why should I trust them?

It's called the human imagination. With Evolutionists (née Darwinists)imagination is an overwhelmingly powerful force able to link two completely unrelated fossils ( or a series of each).

[Fred Nerks]

Whoops...too late! Fossilized before he had a chance to eat his dinner...

[SunkenCiv]

Yes, exactly.

[SunkenCiv]

I saw that one in school. [rimshot!]

[Republican Party Reptile]

Dinosaur life was brutish and short.

Thomas Hobbes was a paleontologist? :)

[ahayes]

Hmmm, what possible could have caused drowning, and/or ash from volcanoes killing so many fossils?

This is a tremendous oversimplification.

Opisthotonic posturing is not diagnostic of a specific cause, but it is clinically observed in a variety of conditions that affect the central nervous system. These conditions can be broadly classified under the following categories: infectious (including bacterial, viral, fungal, parasitic and protozoal), congenital, and acquired conditions (including neoplasia), traumatic injury, toxic insults, and nutritional deficiencies (Swank 1940; Wyatt et al. 1975; Filippich and Cao 1993; Klein et al. 1994; Van der Lugt et al. 1994; Ondo and Delong 1996; Park et al. 2000; Palmer 2002; Austin et al. 2004; Olby et al. 2004). Opisthotonus is observed after hypoxic damage in a variety of conditions: in bacterial and viral meningitis, secondary to administration of certain drugs including some anesthetics, secondary to poisoning with strychnine, thiamine deficiency, edema of the brain, and cerebellar swelling or atrophy (Swank 1940; Sullivan 1970; Sukoff and Ragatz 1980; Saunders and Harris 1990; Ersahin et al. 1992; Filippich and Cao 1993; Klein et al. 1994; Palmer 2002; Olby et al. 2004).

Faux, C. M.; Padian, K. "The opisthonic posture of vertebrate skeletons: postmortem contraction or death throes?" Paleobiology 2007, 33, 201.

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

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