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Did Insects Kill the Dinosaurs?
Ponca City, We Love You writes "Asteroid impacts, massive volcanic flows, and now biting, disease-carrying insects have been put forward as an important contributor to the demise of the dinosaurs. In the Late Cretaceous the world was covered with warm-temperate to tropical areas that swarmed with blood-sucking insects. A theory explored by researchers at Oregon State suggests these bugs carried leishmania, malaria, intestinal parasites, arboviruses and other pathogens. Repeated epidemics may have slowly-but-surely worn down dinosaur populations while ticks, mites, lice and biting flies tormented and weakened them. 'After many millions of years of evolution, mammals, birds and reptiles have evolved some resistance to these diseases,' says Researcher George Poinar. 'But back in the Cretaceous, these diseases were new and invasive, and vertebrates had little or no natural or acquired immunity to them.' The confluence of new insect-spread diseases, loss of traditional food sources, and competition for plants by insect pests could all have provided a lingering, debilitating condition that dinosaurs were ultimately unable to overcome."
Dinosaurs couldn't slap mosquitos, so they all caught malaria?
which is totally what she said
Dinosaurs kill dinosaurs.
I'm sick of all this anti-insect diatribe.
Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em
Ok, lets just make them all happy and say all of the above played a part. Giant meteor hits the Earth, causes dust to obscure the sun and weakens or kills a bunch of plant life. Meanwhile that same impact touches off a bunch of giant lava flows. Finally the dinosaurs already weakened by lack of food are subject to malaria and cough to death on dust clouds. There, all major doom scenarios all rolled into one. Please note, I'm not really serious with this... or am I?
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I learned it on MST3K during the movie Future War (which isn't set in the future and doesn't feature a war, natch.)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mystery_Science_Theater_3000#Future_War
Thank you for not killing me.
Comment of the year
Dinosaurs? Bloodsucking Insects?
Is this another Music Industry article?
this theory would fit nicely with the "world is only 6000 years old crowd"
i mean swarms of insects were mentioned in the bible (old testament, moses exodus part?) somewhere, i dont remember reading about asteroids in that book
...it was video, warming up for the radio star.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
OMG ZERG RUSH! :)
I take my children to see Madonna(..), but I never for once ever thought I was in the same business.Chris Rea.
Between meteor strikes, volcanoes, ice ages, and mosquitoes, they didn't have a chance.
and all within the past 6000 years...
the first lawyer was probably the deathknell.
I know of a similar theory to explain why mammals moved back to the sea... (Whales, dolphins, etc) The theory is that the whales were so pissed off at the mosquitos, that they went into the sea just to get a little relief. They stayed there too long, and so their arms and legs turned into fins and flippers. In case anybody is wondering who proposed the theory, well it was me. And no I don't have any scientific evidence to back it up. But it is certainly more plausible than the theory being discussed regarding the dinosaurs...
Brawndo: It's what plants crave!
Ummm...
Ow...that post hurt my head. Someone left the door unlocked and a paleontologist got in!!??
... so we could have oil. Dammit, don't you people read the Bible?
What is he thinking?
Doesn't he know that Slashdot is only for armchair experts, not actual ones?