Slashdot Mirror
Some Dinosaurs Made Underground Dens
anthemaniac writes "Scientists have long puzzled over how some dinosaurs and other creatures survived the asteroid impact that supposedly caused the KT mass extinction 65 million years ago and wiped out all the big dinosaurs. One idea has been that smaller animals, including mammals, could have endured the fallout, the big chill, the subsequent volcanoes, and whatever else by burrowing. Now scientists have come up with the first evidence of burrowing dinosaurs. They speculate that underground dens might explain how some dinosaurs got through long, dark winters at high latitudes, too."
The fake dinosaur bones that god put in the ground to test our faith were positioned in a what was made to appear as an underground burrow.
This all happened sometime last week.
if the dinosaurs were so smart, how come they're dead?
The images shown in the story are quite informative. Apparently, the http://images.livescience.com/images/070323_dino_s cale_02.jpg people's noses were much larger back then, too.
These burrowing dinosaurs must be from the species of Skeletal Dinosaurs we've found living underground for millions of years.
;)
SECRET TIP: Use bludgeoning weapons when fighting skeletal dinosaurs, they're resistant to piercing!
When the great cataclysmic meteorite strikes, only those of us sequestered in basements playing WoW and hacking up patches to the Linux kernel will survive the impact. And, even more certainly, when the atmospheric plume of debris blocks out the sun, others will starve, and only we who subsist on inorganics such as cheetos and mountain dew will live to assert our genes in the remnant ecosystem.
When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Burrowing, like all behaviors, can't really be traced phylogenically for a couple of reasons:1.As this article shows us, it's hard to find evidence of behaviors that happened yesterday let alone millions of years ago (though under the right conditions burrowing does leave a trace, as the article shows), 2. Behaviors vary more wildly than the average allele. Though there is a large component of genetics at play with behavior, ultimately behaviors are products of the physiological phenotypes associated with said alleles and sensory input. Different environmental inputs yield different behavioral outputs for the same allele. Therefore there isn't an isomorphic relationship between genes and behavior. Behavioral traits tend to pop up independently of each other quite often, so it is impossible to say that there is one node on the evolutionary branch that "sprouted modern burrowing/hibernating reptiles and mammals".
/. community to comment on this. (That's my way of saying: "Though I may sound like an expert, I very well may be full of crap and would love it if someone with more knowledge would fact check this post").
Granted this is coming from what I learned as an undergraduate so there are probably better people in the
Does this sig remind you of Agatha Christie?
We have a small flock of what I now call the "cluckeraptors", because they certainly *act* like I imagine dinosaurs would act. I mean, they may be small and feathery and soft looking, but watch them run around the yard and interact with each other and you can see how utterly ruthless and focused they are. A few primary drives to them and not much else. For instance if one of them gets injured or the least bit "off" or ill, the others will be merciless with them, it's like they can't stand weakness and translate that to "food". Fascinating to watch really. Lean down close and look a rooster right in the eye, you can see the miniature power there. If they were say ten feet tall or larger, yes indeedy they would be serious nasty predators.