Posted on 08/02/2008 11:40:34 PM PDT by Libloather
Dinosaurs Diversified Over Time, Not Suddenly
Many Species, Many, Many Years
July 23, 2008
The belief that dinosaurs underwent explosive species diversification just before they were wiped out is an illusion, for the beasts' main evolutionary shifts took place millions of years before, a study says.
The strange demise of the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous era some 65 million years ago has given rise to a popular view that almost has the tinge of Greek tragedy.
Just as the rulers of the Earth had reached their evolutionary zenith, a catastrophic event -- possibly a space rock that slammed into Earth -- brought the curtain down on their long reign.
Scientific support for this view comes the number of dinosaur fossils dating from a period called the Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution, between 125 million to 80 million years ago, when Earth's book of life was changed forever.
During this epoch of riotous biodiversity, flowering plants, social insects, butterflies, modern groups of lizards, mammals, and possibly birds, too, all emerged.
Some experts have suggested that dinosaurs were also part of the show, as so many weird fossils, such as duckbilled hadrosaurs, horned ceratopsians, pachycephalosaurs and other wonders, date from this time.
But a new study, published on Wednesday in a British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, says that dinosaurs were less than a sideshow in the DNA spectacular.
Researchers led by Graeme Lloyd of the University of Bristol, western England, devised a "supertree" of dinosaur evolution, patiently analyzing how more than 450 species -- about 70 percent of the known finds -- developed.
(Excerpt) Read more at dsc.discovery.com ...
My semi-educated guess - the planet manufactures oil - and always will - period.
Just who started this 'fossil' fuel rumor in the first place?
Why don’t you leave off with the headline commentary?
Semi-educated guess followed by “period.” LOL.
I would understand that more if I could.
What do you mean?
1757, Mikhail Lomonossov (Gawd I love the Internet)
Fossil fuel is just a theory.
I heard the rumor started because fossil remains happened to be mixed with oil, so that’s why some jumped to the conclusion that the oil is “fossil fuel.”
How did dinosaurs get at the bottom of the North Sea?
Those would be polar dinosaurs. Get with the times...
They sunk.
Golly! That would mean fossil fuels are...um...RENEWABLE?
An oil guy was saying he thought that oil is abiotic & produced deeply in intense heat & pressure areas where friction & pressure break down carbon elements & turn it into gas, and it works it’s way up, cools and congeals and is OIL.
I think that kinda makes the point. Tree fossil remains are the bedrock for future finds? I dunno.
If only we could make oil out of past and present editions of the NY Times...
An oil guy THOUGHT? Apparently, he doesn't know.
The earth's core temp is estimated at around 5000 to 7000 degrees Celsius. Some say 9000 degrees. (Talk about global warming - eh?) No chemical reactions take place at those temps? Kinda hard to believe...
Try this. It is science, and refutes your notion of inorganic origins of commercial hydrocarbon deposits.
http://www.geotimes.org/nov02/NN_oil.html
Geoscientists are cringing as news reports dredge up what they have long considered a preposterous assertion about the origin of oil: that none of the fossil fuels found on this planet come from fossils.
Refutes - or confirms?
Coal is believed to have come from decomposed primeval swamp forests of giant mosses and ferns from the time of the early dinosaurs. Oil OTOH comes from plankton of ancient oceans.
http://www.bbg.org/gar2/pgn/2003su_fossilfuels.html
Yeah, if you want to wait hundreds of millions of years...or else God decides to make it all come back in a >poof!< again.
But like groundwater, if you take it out faster than it's being generated, then of course you're going to run out.
Did you read the article, or just paste the part about geoscientists cringing at news reports that are wrong (causing people like you to believe things that are wrong)?
The larger point is that even if the abiotic oil theory is true — and it almost certainly is to some degree — it does not mean that oil fields will be replenished at a rate that is economically meaningful for us today. Once we find and deplete every economically useful oil field on earth, it will take a long time before oil reappears in meaningful quantities through abiotic processes.
In the meantime, we will need other energy sources. The best approach is to drill and dig so as to extend the fossil fuel era as long as possible. At the same time, we must develop other energy sources: solar; geothermal; hydro; tidal; ocean thermal; nuclear; biomass; biofuel; etc.
The Democrats are fools for thinking that finding and adopting economically useful successors for oil and coal will be easy or cheap. In disputing that folly, we should not let ourselves become fools as well by thinking that abiotic oil processes make such successors unnecessary.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.