Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction

mmmscience sends along coverage from the Examiner on evidence that some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s) at the end of the Cretaceous period. Here is the original journal article. "A US paleontologist is challenging one of the field's greatest theories: the mass extinction of dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. Jim Fassett, a paleontologist who holds an emeritus position at the US Geological Survey, recently published a paper in Palaeontologia Electronica with evidence that points to a pocket of dinosaurs that somehow survived in remote parts New Mexico and Colorado for up to half a million years past the end of the Cretaceous period. If this theory holds up, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age."

Comments

Cavemen?

[SultanCemil]

So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...

Re:Cavemen?

[TapeCutter]

"So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm..."

No, but the good news is modern technology has brought the internet into our caves and in the time it takes to post this comment another 2 "Cave chicks go Rex riding" websites will have been created.

As for TFA, interesting but only just outside the uranium dating error bars and no mention of the error margin in the strike date ~65mya. No mention of a KT boundry at the site that is clearly below the fossils. There is very strong evidence that insects were wiped out across the Americas for over a million years, so I think a bit more extrodinary evidence is required to belive a band of dinosours somehow survived in a "lost valley".

Re:Cavemen?

[RuBLed]

If it existed there must have been a porn of it.

Re:Cavemen?

[drinkypoo]

Odds are against it - have you seen how lizards behave? One wrong shift of weight and you'd be a snack. Then again, we domesticated lots of other animals... Still, the idea (did not RTFA) is compelling. There ARE cave paintings that appear to depict humans and dinos together. They have been used (by idiots) to support the Noah's Ark theory, which is of course a logical hiccough of biblical proportions... but seriously, the idea of men and dinos coexisting has never been well-debunked.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

not a lost valley, but the Great Valley, noob.

xoxoxo,
Littlefoot

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is very strong evidence that insects were wiped out across the Americas for over a million years, so I think a bit more extrodinary evidence is required to belive a band of dinosours somehow survived in a "lost valley".

More evidence is always good, but once you actually start to think about it, "a small population of some dinosaurs survived in remote areas until it eventually petered out" is actually more plausible than "every single last dinosaur died at once in a gigantic catastrophe that nevertheless was not large enough to affect other animals such as mammals to the same extent".

Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too? I'm certainly not saying they must have, but just on the face of things, it seems more likely that their extinction was gradual and drawn-out over a long period of time. (And yes, I know the K-T extinction is not thought to have happened in the blink of an eye, anyway, but you know what I mean.)

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is proof of the reptilian conspiracy!

yes, yes..that's what it is.

Re:Cavemen?

[meyekul]

The irony is as soon as they step out of the valley, they drop their eye glasses and shatter them on the rocks.

Re:Cavemen?

[AlecC]

Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too?

Basically, size. The dinosaurs were all largeish - turkey-sized or bigger - with the exception of thos who seem to have evolved into birds, and may have been much smaller because of the nifty invention of feathers. The only mammals at the time were small, shrew-like animals. It is not unreasonable to think that small beasts could survive, scavenging of the dead big beasts, where big beasts could not.

Re:Cavemen?

[JustOK]

Yup! Yup! Yup!

Re:Cavemen?

[JustOK]

The amphibians were going to gain control, but when the reptilians attacked, all the frogs surrendered.

Re:Cavemen?

[nephridium]

So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...

Not really. It says they made it to the "Paleocene", i.e. the epoch adjacent to the Cretaceous. To have meet any cavemen they'd have had to survive through the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene all the way to the Pleistocene era. That would still be around 60 million years.

I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.

Re:Cavemen?

[Rip Dick]

but... there was time now...

Re:Cavemen?

[camperdave]

To have meet any cavemen they'd have had to survive through the Eocene, Oligocene, Miocene all the way to the Pleistocene era.

So what you're saying is that they didn't make the 'cene.

Re:Cavemen?

[spvo]

So your saying only the scavaging meat eaters would have survived? I think that might have left a significant gap in the food chain.

Re:Cavemen?

[TapeCutter]

It's the place where the bones were found that is remarkable, obviously some things survived somewhere on the planet and evolved into birds, humans, etc. However America was closest to the impact and the KT-boundry in N America is preserved in the rock as a layer of tiny glass beads (vaporised sand) that covers the entire continent. The only thing in the American fossil record for a couple of million years after the hit is an abundance of plants and some marine animals.

To find a bunch of dinosaurs that survived what the entire insect population could not, is an extrodinary claim. However I don't think the scientists themselves are explicitly making this claim, I think they are just reporting their evidence and asking "how could this be?".

Re:Cavemen?

[gtall]

Do you know what 2 week old dead dinosaur smells like? Maybe they could scavenge for awhile but after that I'm sure the mammals would be too disgusted.

Re:Cavemen?

[gtall]

Bingo, just to fix the time line a bit, humans were thought to have split from apes roughly 6-7 million years ago...except for some valued coworkers here.

Re:Cavemen?

[BigBlueOx]

The dinosaurs were all largeish - turkey-sized or bigger - with the exception of thos who seem to have evolved into birds, and may have been much smaller because of the nifty invention of feathers.

Well, it seems from the latest I've read on these things that paleontologists are now a-thinkin that a lot of the big dinosaurs had feathers too. In fact one article I read said that it was quite possible that T-Rex himself looked "like a big chick".

I remember that article because the image of a 60 foot high "chick" with fluffy baby-feathers coated with the rotting blood and entrails of its victims and flesh-caked teeth the size of stalactites is one that haunts my dreams to this day.

Oh. You want cites? Ah.

Look! A bunny! Look at the bunny! (runs away)

Re:Cavemen?

[D Ninja]

Haha, I definitely did not think I would ever see a Ducky reference on Slashdot. Ahhh...the first movie I ever remember seeing in a movie theater. Had the toys and everything. Those were the days.

Re:Cavemen?

[pe1rxq]

the idea of men and dinos coexisting has never been well-debunked.

You mean besides the still gigantic time gap between these dinos and the earliest thing even resembling men?

Re:Cavemen?

[IndustrialComplex]

Do you know what 2 week old dead dinosaur smells like? Maybe they could scavenge for awhile but after that I'm sure the mammals would be too disgusted.

You obviously haven't met my dog.

I submit as evidence:
1 dog owned by IndustrialComplex
1 cat litterbox also owned by IndustrialComplex

Conclusion:
IndustrialComplex is disgusted.

Re:Cavemen?

[IndustrialComplex]

I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.

The Neanderthals did.

However, they decided that it was easier to use their time machines to go back in time and settle on a continent which is now Antarctica. They built cities underground so that they could avoid disturbing their own ancestors as they continued to develop. Just when the asteroid that wiped out the Dinosaurs was about to hit, they used their now 500 million year advanced technology to leave this planet.

A few come back from time to time to play pratical jokes on their cousins. Kind of like becoming fantastically wealthy and heading back to your HS reunion.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I also highly doubt cavemen (or cavewomen for that matter) had the skill or technology to time travel back to the Paleocene. Afaik only genetically enhanced laboratory mice can do that.

Not sure I got the reference. Chrichton's "Timeline", or Pinky and the Brain?

Re:Cavemen?

[flyingsquid]

More evidence is always good, but once you actually start to think about it, "a small population of some dinosaurs survived in remote areas until it eventually petered out" is actually more plausible than "every single last dinosaur died at once in a gigantic catastrophe that nevertheless was not large enough to affect other animals such as mammals to the same extent". Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too? I'm certainly not saying they must have, but just on the face of things, it seems more likely that their extinction was gradual and drawn-out over a long period of time. (And yes, I know the K-T extinction is not thought to have happened in the blink of an eye, anyway, but you know what I mean.)

It's a bit telling that the study is published in an obscure web-only paleontology journal called "Palaeontologica Electronica". I'm not saying that good work can't be published in obscure journals, but I would argue that if you had really strong evidence for post-Cretaceous dinosaurs, you wouldn't publish it in a journal that nobody's ever heard of. You'd be publishing in Nature, Science, or PNAS. That suggests that he published here because he didn't have a lot of options, because the scientific community was pretty unreceptive to evidence presented in this study. Obviously, the conventional wisdom isn't everything. Geologists hated the idea of continental drift, and the asteroid impact hypothesis got a very cold reception before the Chicxulub crater was found. But it's worth asking whether the evidence here is any good or not.

First off, it's not as if they've suddenly discovered dinosaurs where nobody expected them. Paleontologists have known for decades that these rock beds contain dinosaurs (as well as typical Cretaceous mammals). It's just that everyone else has always interpreted these rocks as being of Cretaceous age, rather than post-Cretaceous. What he's doing is arguing that the rocks are older than we thought.

Second, what's his evidence for saying these are post-Cretaceous rocks? The best evidence would be a marker bed- if you could show that a skeleton lay above the iridium layer formed by the fallout of the asteroid, then it would be pretty much unrefutable. However, the iridium layer has *not* been recognized in this area. The second best evidence would be a layer of volcanic ash which can be dated using radioactive dating. There are no ashes under the bones which are younger than 65.5 million years old (the date of the impact). In fact all the ashes under the bones are around 75-73 million years old. So his evidence is the pollen grains. He says they look like post-Cretaceous pollen, not Cretaceous pollen. That doesn't seem terribly convincing in my mind. Given that the mammals seen in the same rocks are pretty clearly Cretaceous type mammals, the fossil evidence is contradictory here. His other evidence is something called magnetostratigraphy- the Earth's magnetic poles reverse every few hundred thousand or million years, with series of normal and reversed polarities. If you can match up a series of polarity changes, you can *sometimes* figure out how old the rocks are. But it's not a very precise method, and it's a bit tricky to figure out where a particular sequence going "normal-reversed-normal-reversed" fits into the geological record. It's a bit like trying to figure out the time and date by whether your neighbor has his house lights on or off, or whether the trash has been picked up recently or not.

In short, it would take a lot more than this one paper to overturn the consensus that has resulted from one hundred years of scientific research. I mean, if someone published an experiment tomorrow saying that Einstein was wrong, what would your reaction be? To reject Einstein? Or to think that the experimenter might have screwed up? Currently, the bulk of the evidence says that the extinction took place 65.5 million years ago, and that (with the exception of birds) the dinosaurs didn't make it.

Re:Cavemen?

[spiralofhope]

More evidence is always good, but once you actually start to think about it, "a small population of some dinosaurs survived in remote areas until it eventually petered out" is actually more plausible then...

Science isn't based on opinions like "more plausible then [sic]".

... than "every single last dinosaur died at once in a gigantic catastrophe that nevertheless was not large enough to affect other animals such as mammals to the same extent".

The physical evidence and thereafter the calculated energy of an entry (atmosphere alone) indicate that the global air temperature was raised to the flash point of living wood and that all the forests of the world were set on fire.

The result is the death of the bulk of above-surface land plant life.

Then the earth cooled for various reasons, starting with light reflection off of the smoke.

Dinosaurs died out because they have no internal way to heat themselves up. Mammals do.

Dinosaurs died out because they need to eat big creatures. Mammals don't.

Mammals had an edge because of some sulphur-resistance mutations which survive even today.

Don't think for a second that mammals didn't suffer. As I understand, mammals may have been down to as few as SEVEN SPECIES after that catastrophe.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously some things survived somewhere on the planet

    Perhaps because they were intentionally saved?

the KT-boundry in N America is preserved in the rock as a layer of tiny glass beads (vaporised sand) that covers the entire continent

    And you know what else turns sand into tiny glass beads and deposits them in a single sedimentary layer? large volumes of water in motion... say from a worldwide flooding event.

The only thing in the American fossil record for a couple of million years after the hit is an abundance of plants and some marine animals

    Let's see, an area gets covered in water and kills all the existing wildlife, so it's only understandable that the first things to repopulate will be those that can move in quickly from in the water (marine animals)or on the water (plants).

I think they are just reporting their evidence and asking "how could this be?"

Once again the fossil record presents evidence that is contradictory to the traditional view of history, while another theory explains these things much better. But of course, since this is a scientific community and since we can't confine God to a box in a laboratory, he obviously must not exist and any historical documents which detail his interactions with our world are simply the collective delusional fantasies of generations of human civilization.

Now, before you start all the flames and negative moderation, all I ask is that you honestly answer one simple question: Neither you nor I are paleontologists, thus we only have the evidence which has been presented to us from other people... so why are you afraid to admit that the biblical account of creation and history might be a better way to explain the evidence presented?

Re:Cavemen?

[Mister Whirly]

How do you think the first "self cleaning litterbox" was invented?

Re:Cavemen?

[Anachragnome]

"...so why are you afraid to admit that the biblical account of creation and history might be a better way to explain the evidence presented?"

Because we can't confine God to a box in a laboratory, maybe?

Re:Cavemen?

[jbengt]

Cats have very inefficient digestive systems, and, ignoring the possibility of parasites, the sad fact is that there's probably more nutrition, protein especially, in cat feces than in many commercial dog foods.
Still disgusting, though.

Re:Cavemen?

[QuantumPion]

Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too?

Because when the ejecta from a largeish asteroid impact falls back to earth, it heats up, bathing the entire surface in 500+ degree infrared light for hours to days. Small animals can hide in holes in the ground, making them nearly immune to the effects. But for everything else, BBQ's on!

Re:Cavemen?

[spartacus_prime]

Before they ruined the franchise by making musical sequels. Except Chomper. He was badass.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the Biblical account of creation was disproven 200 years ago. In fact, BOTH Biblical accounts were disproven 200 years ago.

Re:Cavemen?

[Patch86]

For the cat faeces to be more nutritious than dog food, cat food would have to be significantly more nutritious again.

Have you any idea exactly how much ash there is in cat food...?

Re:Cavemen?

[Patch86]

Oh. You want cites? Ah.

Look! A bunny! Look at the bunny! (runs away)

Oh come one, that's not even trying...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannosaurus#Skin_and_feathers

Re:Cavemen?

[steelfood]

They got nuked.

Re:Cavemen?

[StarkRG]

Insects are easier to kill than dinosaurs. Or, so I assume as I've never actually tried to kill a dinosaur by smacking it with a newspaper.

Re:Cavemen?

[Gilmoure]

Our dogs think magical road fudge tastes just like real fudge. Go figuh. At least they keep the trails around the property clean.

Re:Cavemen?

[waddleman]

For the curious, yet uninformed, which event in scientific discovery occurred 200 years ago? Please do not say Darwin's Theory of Evolution because the second voyage of the Beagle did not occur until 1831; "On the Origin of Species" did not occur until 1859.

Re:Cavemen?

[jgrahn]

The only mammals at the time were small, shrew-like animals.

Not according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals#Expansion_of_ecological_niches_in_the_Mesozoic.

Re:Cavemen?

[Gilmoure]

At the help desk, we call them customers.

Re:Cavemen?

[Tubal-Cain]

So your saying only the scavaging meat eaters would have survived?

No, but rabbits (excluding the Monty Python breed) and other small herbivores can live on a lot less plant matter than a beast the size of a small house.

Re:Cavemen?

[bckrispi]

On the internets, we call them "creationists".

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dragons.

Re:Cavemen?

[GodfatherofSoul]

Have you ever seen a prehistoric fertility idol? Rumors of the fitness of cavewomen are greatly exaggerated.

Re:Cavemen?

[slapys]

In short, it would take a lot more than this one paper to overturn the consensus that has resulted from one hundred years of scientific research. I mean, if someone published an experiment tomorrow saying that Einstein was wrong, what would your reaction be? To reject Einstein? Or to think that the experimenter might have screwed up?

No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.

- Albert Einstein

Re:Cavemen?

[Anenome]

Wolves, bears in the arctic still eat the defrosting remains of thousands of years old Mammoths as the weather exposes them.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't mind. They got a daytime job. They're doing all right.

Re:Cavemen?

[Denjiro]

9 out of 10 dogs agree, Kitty Cat Crunchies can't be beat.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you know what else turns sand into tiny glass beads and deposits them in a single sedimentary layer? large volumes of water in motion... say from a worldwide flooding event.

Uh, no. Flooding does not actually do that.

Once again the fossil record presents evidence that is contradictory to the traditional view of history, while another theory explains these things much better. But of course, since this is a scientific community and since we can't confine God to a box in a laboratory, he obviously must not exist and any historical documents which detail his interactions with our world are simply the collective delusional fantasies of generations of human civilization.

Since this is a scientific community, we demand evidence.

You speak of a "traditional" view of history. It is instructive to examine what exactly you mean by "tradition". Essentially, you have decided that the Christian tradition is correct, and therefore must be assumed to be true. Yet there are many religious traditions other than the Christian, most of which contradict Christianity to some degree or another. How do we decide which of these religiously informed views of history is correct?

If the answer is "which one agrees with objective evidence", then sorry, you lose, along with all the other religions. Numerous events held to be of major importance in the Judeo-Christian tradition have been disproven by historical and scientific research. For example, the story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt is unsupportable. And the Flood myth is just that, a myth -- we do not find in the geological record any evidence of a worldwide flood. No amount of pseudoscience or ridiculous claims (such as, I'm afraid, the notion that a flood would fuse sand into glass beads) will alter this undeniable fact.

Study the history of geology sometime... in large part it is a story of scientists struggling to reconcile their Christian beliefs with the story actually told by the Earth, and eventually (in most but not all cases) choosing to go where the evidence lead them and giving up on rationalizing natural history with the Bible's account.

The stark truth: if the Bible is literally true in every word, then God designed the Earth and Nature to lie to you. If the natural world is the truth, then God lied to you in the Bible, or did not intend it to be a record of literal truth, or perhaps did not influence it at all, or perhaps does not exist at all. It is up to you to decide how to resolve this intellectual problem.

Re:Cavemen?

[flyingsquid]

Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too? I'm certainly not saying they must have, but just on the face of things, it seems more likely that their extinction was gradual and drawn-out over a long period of time. (And yes, I know the K-T extinction is not thought to have happened in the blink of an eye, anyway, but you know what I mean.)

In the wake of the asteroid/comet impact, few if any groups were unscathed. In his 1996 book, Archibald (who is actually an *opponent* of the impact hypothesis)lists the following extinction percentages for vertebrates in Montana:

sharks - 100%

ray-finned fish - 40%

amphibians - 0%

mammals - 50%

turtles - 12%

lizards - 70%

champsosaurs - 0%

crocodiles - 20%

dinosaurs - 100%

That's by no means a complete list! Archibald leaves out pterosaurs, enantiornithine birds, and hesperornithiform birds, which all suffer 100% extinction. There is also evidence that insects were hit hard (based on the disappearance of certain types of feeding traces from leaf fossils), the plants show extinctions at the boundary, and freshwater clams also show a major extinction. Also, although the amphibians supposedly don't suffer any extinction, keep in mind that their fossil record for this period is based entirely on scrappy isolated bones. We probably don't have a good handle on exactly how many amphibian species were around, so it's possible that they suffered some extinctions, and we just don't realize it.

Also, keep in mind that the fact that a species survived does not mean that it was unaffected. If 99.9% of the individuals of a mammal species are incinerated by the fireball or starve to death in the ensuing ecosystem collapse, but 1000 individuals survive (eating cockroaches or whatever) to perpetuate the species, then the species survives. In an asteroid impact and ensuing impact winter, the difference between winners and losers might be that the losers are completely wiped out, whereas the 'winners' are almost completelywiped out. There would be survivors, but it's gonna be so bleak and grim that the living would envy the dead (assuming the mammals are capable of such philosophical sentiments, which is of course doubtful). Ever read Cormack McCarthy's "The Road"? That's what it would probably be like. Cold, dark, everything burnt, nothing growing, and the survivors scavenging off of whatever is left from the old world... and preying on each other.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that mean that dogs are higher up the food chain? Or rather, that dogs are comparable to worms and bacteria in their relation to cats?

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

It certainly gives a new meaning to eating your own dogfood.

Re:Cavemen?

[MaskedSlacker]

It was the first movie I remember seeing period, forget the movie theater.

Re:Cavemen?

[Randle_Revar]

>Many kinds of animals survived, after all. Why shouldn't dinosaurs have, too?

Plenty of them did survive, you may have eaten one, or one of their eggs, in a recent meal, or one might be singing outside your window right now.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to agree with the original poster on this one.

Flooding does not actually do that

When was the last time you sat through a worldwide flood to prove that the sand didn't move and abrade enough to make round particles. Particles of similar composition and geometry would settle out of a suspension at roughly the same rate, thus depositing in the same layer of sediment from such an event. And glass is simply amorphous silica (plus some other elements depending on the source) which could quite easily come from any catastrophic event triggering a worldwide flood.

Since this is a scientific community, we demand evidence

Except for when that evidence could be used to support the claim for the existence of God, in which case you refuse to accept it because acknowledging the existence of God would then mean you have to accept that you're not in control of every aspect of your life, and that you might actually have to be responsible for your actions and decisions when all is said and done.

If the answer is "which one agrees with objective evidence", then sorry, you lose, along with all the other religions...

As a Christian, I have a personal relationship with God through the person of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm not a theologian. I can't tell you every detail of how God works or all the nuances of the Christian religion and how the latest biblical interpretation fits with the current scientific interpretation of natural history. But, I can tell you that through my own personal experiences I have very much seen and felt God's presence and work in my life, and what I have experienced is very much in agreement with the nature of God as described by most Christian believers through the ages. Because these are things I have seen and experiences in my own life, there are no textbooks or academic papers out there that can convince me that God does not exist. Is this objective? No, since it's only my personal experience. But when it comes to God, his creation of the universe, and other such things which exist and operate outside of the natural realm, I'll take the word of the one who made everything and knows everything together with the supporting proof of repeated personal experience over the theories of scientists who claim a "lack of objective evidence" (read "lack of evidence that they like") in order to rationalize their own anti-god prejudice.

What it comes down to is that there are some things in the universe which we will never fully understand because they deal with the interaction of a supernatural God and the "natural" world as we perceive it. I do believe that the the bible is literally true in every word. But that does not mean that the Earth was created to lie to us. Rather, all it means is that in an effort to rationalize God out of existence, those who adhere to the religion of human intellect and demand objective proof for everything in existence refuse to accept that there are simply some things in the universe that we as flawed and corrupted beings will never fully understand.

The actual stark truth: It doesn't matter whether or not we can reconcile the biblical account of creation with the scientific community's interpretation of natural history. What matters is that there is a God, and he is the the ultimate authority in all of this.

Re:Cavemen?

[HiThere]

FWIW, many dinosaurs appear to have also been warm-blooded. And current evidence has people thinking that many may have had feathers.

So possibly dinosaurs were just slightly more unlucky than mammals were. We know (believe) that birds are the descendants of dinosaurs, so perhaps all surviving dinosaurs were smallish onithiscians that laid eggs. The survivors of these groups evolved into birds. Perhaps also seven species of dinosaur survived. Or eight. But they all happened to be rather similar in the same way that birds are similar to each other.

And maybe a part of the problem is in thinking of animals in terms of the classifications that we give them now, rather than how they were then. Personally I expect most of the survivors were rather omnivorous, and that they could eat dead plants when the dead animals became too decayed. And as insects began to reappear they ate them, too.

That said, it's also possible that some groups survived a bit longer before dying out. Nothing surprising about that. Almost every species that's ever existed went extinct at some point. We're just familiar with the ones that haven't done so yet. So in some sheltered valley, perhaps small plants survived. And some larger dinosaurs. Perhaps only as eggs, that later hatched. This doesn't mean that they would continue to survive. We're talking about the kind of change in ecology that doesn't happen very often....say 7 or 8 times in the planet's history so far. Even if a species lives through the immediate effects, one could expect that it would be quite likely to go extinct fairly quickly. And as time goes on, brand new competitors would be coming in (here we're talking multiple millions of years). These new competitors would have new and different ways of competing.

I'm not convinced by (the summary of) the article...but I don't find it impossible either. I'll wait for more consideration by professionals before I make up my mind. (And even if this is wrong, I suspect the scenario is true somewhere, even if we never find evidence for it.) But we already know that they didn't survive over the long term...except the ones whose descendants became birds.

Re:Cavemen?

[jeverettk]

Disproven? By what means? Surely you don't mean scientifically disproven. Surely you don't intend to imply that science can prove or disprove any question of origins? You have heard of the scientific method, a systematic study of natural processes by way of observation, hypothesis, testing and so on?

Re:Cavemen?

[riverat1]

Cats are more carnivorous than dogs. Cat food is around 30% protein and dog food is around 21%. I guess that makes cats a bit higher on the food chain but as wild animals I think they're about the same level. After all, cougars and wolves have a lot of prey in common.

Re:Cavemen?

[greyhueofdoubt]

The solution, then, would be to feed the catfood directly to the dog :)

Re:Cavemen?

[TapeCutter]

"so why are you afraid to admit that the biblical account of creation and history might be a better way to explain the evidence presented?"

If "god did it" satisfies your intellectual curiosity then your own bible says you are a fool.

Re:Cavemen?

[BlackSnake112]

Our old dog helped himself to what ever food he could get. We fed him dog food, but he would eat cat food, fish food (this never filled him up though), and always felt that he should eat when ever and what ever a person was eating. Which was funny when someone was eating on TV. He would start begging us to feed him since someone was eating (on TV). The dog learned to open the fridge which was a very bad thing. We wondered where the food was going until we found where he was hiding the empty plastic bags and wraps.

This is not a joke. The dog was an 85 pound 1-2% body fat giant dalmatian. He was totally deaf which is why is watched TV and was very visual. During dog shows he would wine to play with the dogs he saw on TV. When the dogs would 'walk' off the screen to one side, he would get up and look behind the TV for that dog. It was so funny.

p.s. He was a rescue we didn't go to a breeder to get him. He was scheduled for termination the very next day if we didn't pick him up.

Re:Cavemen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or that dinosaurs rode around on skimpily clad cavewomen.

I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[GordonCopestake]

only I call them "chickens".

Re:I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[maxume]

Does it make them angry?

Re:I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[Jason Levine]

My wife's parents have a dinosaur in their house called a cockatoo. They used to have 2 of them and when they both squawked (screeched might be a better term) together they would answer the phone: "Hello, Jurassic Park."

Re:I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[smash]

Dunno what rates as a "large" dinosaur in your book, chickens certainly don't cut it in mine.

Re:I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[Junior J. Junior III]

only I call them "chickens".

Tyrannosaurus Clux

Re:I keep dinosaurs in my garden

[Anonymous Coward]

only I call them "chickens".

Me too.

Only I keep mine in the pool, and call them "Sharks".

But mine have lasers...

Yes....of course...

[Corporate Troll]

They're called "birds".... Duh! ;-)

Finally !

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, I've got the explanation for that one online date.
I really thought that whales can walk now...

Still with us

[Smivs]

They are still with us, working for some IT departments. Have you never seen an IEsixosaurus?

Re:Still with us

[Anonymous Coward]

no, but I've seen a one-eyed dinosaur-- doyathinkhesaurus

Re:Still with us

[BikeHelmet]

Pun?....PUN!?....PUUUUNNNN!!!!

NooooOOOOO!!!

(The rest of this post is a string of lowercase letters to get rid of the shout filter.)

Re:Still with us

[RuBLed]

MOZIRRAAA!!!

Re:Still with us

[V!NCENT]

Even those are facing extinction: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/28/2322248&art_pos=5

Re:Still with us

[Hogwash McFly]

No, but there's a machine in the sever room capable of Tri-teraflops.

Re:Still with us

[Anonymous Coward]

I've personally worked with a COBOLsaurus. He was labelled C-Rex :)

Re:Still with us

[GweeDo]

Does he have a dog? Maybe a...doyathinkhesaurus REX!

Re:Still with us

[skeeto]

I heard a dinosaur ran in the last US election, too.

Re:Still with us

[bckrispi]

I see them in my office too: usually cranking out COBOL code.

Re:Still with us

[BikeHelmet]

Oh come on now - sometimes the response is funnier than the joke!

And how could I possibly be modded overrated, before I was rated at all? Indeed, did any of you think of that!?

Re:Still with us

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Wasn't funny.
2) You're a typical "over 1,000,000" user. Dumb to the core, but thinks he's smart, funny, and fits in. Sadly, you will soon, the way this site is going.

Other findings.

[Mr2cents]

Just a day ago, I read another article claiming that the impact predates the extinction event by 300000 years. The last thing hasn't been said about the dinosaurs, that's for sure. I really like the way David Polly puts it in the article (the one linked to by /.): "Finding conclusive evidence, however, is a difficult matter when the crime scene is 65 million years old".

Re:Other findings.

[Burnhard]

I wrote a paper on this many years ago, concluding that the KT event caused extinctions in species already in decline. For example, the Ammonoidea were becoming less numerous for ten million years before the impact. But previous posters are quite correct, the Dinosaurs are survived by Birds!

Re:Other findings.

[flewp]

This is something I was thinking about yesterday when watching something on TV about the extinction of some of the huge mammals. Is it possible that quite a few of the dinosaurs survived the asteroid impact for quite awhile, but were slowly led to extinction by the more adaptive animals such as birds* and mammals out competing them? A lot of the stuff I've read always makes it seems like happened in a blink of the eye, but I've wondered if it could have been much more gradual than is often implied.

* In this context I'm making a distinction between dinosaurs and what we commonly think of as birds.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

That paper has been sharply criticised by other palaeontologists working in the area.

Please, treat all, "the meteorite didn't kill the dinosaurs!" articles and papers (even if they're in peer-reviewed journals) with extreme scepticism. They are almost always embarrassingly myopic or out of date. There is an imperial fuckload of evidence that the bolide impact did it.

Re:Other findings.

[Shrike82]

I'm confused. Is that larger or smaller than a metric fuckload of evidence?

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

The problem with the "already in decline" arguments is that there are statistical effects that make sudden extinctions look gradual. This has pretty much been demonstrated to be the case for Late Cretaceous dinosaurs (I don't know about ammonites).

People want to cling to the K/T extinction being a mystery for some reason. It just isn't anymore. If you want a good mystery, the Permian-Triassic extinction event is bigger, and still (relatively) unexplained.

Re:Other findings.

[jellomizer]

Unfortunatly a lot of people don't like that idea. Not because of the science but because it puts us an other chip down. So most people are willing to accept evolution, but they take comfort their ancestors who resembled mice were in some way so much more superior then those giant monsters, and could survive a mass extinction while those huge monsters couldn't. We are just getting to the point where we can grasp that some dinosaurs evolved into birds, however we kinda are wishing they were more birdlike before the mass extinction.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

2.45729 times bigger.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

No, all the evidence suggests it was in a blink of an eye. Also, there's no reason to think that mammals were "more adaptive" than dinosaurs (if anything, it was the other way around!).

Re:Other findings.

[rohan972]

Metric fuckloads of evidence are measured.
Imperial fuckloads of evidence are imposed by edict.

It's an altogether different concept, but once an edict is proclaimed, the imperial fuckloads of evidence could be measured in metric units.

Re:Other findings.

[Anonymous Coward]

But previous posters are quite correct, the Dinosaurs are survived by Birds!

So you're saying that the Dinosaurs gave us the bird?

Re:Other findings.

[maxume]

I can think of one reason to believe it.

Re:Other findings.

[JustOK]

But, expressed in LOC's that would be?

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

Well, we are obviously talking about a context outside of a large bolide impact.

Re:Other findings.

[Anonymous Coward]

I can think of one reason to believe it.

But only that one. And that's only because you're defining "more adaptive" as "survived in unpredictable circumstances". That's utterly meaningless. It's nothing more than the "survival of the fittest" tautology.

And it's debatable anyway. Every time I look outside, I see more dinosaurs (birds!) than I do mammals. The KT event merely allowed mammals to take over some "large animal" ecological niches from dinosaurs.

Given that "large animals" have been lot more prone to extinction and replacement, I could say owning the "large animal" niches is just being lucky and having a turn wearing the target and is not indicative of any inherent adaptive advantage.

And if occupying that type of niche is indicative of superiority, you've got to explain why dinosaurs owned those niches for 150+ million years if the mammals were superior.

I'd say mammals have another 100 million years to go before they can lay claim to superiority over dinosaurs.

Re:Other findings.

[linzeal]

What is next birdmen?

Re:Other findings.

[drinkypoo]

We are just getting to the point where we can grasp that some dinosaurs evolved into birds

Who is this 'we' you speak of? I got the idea in elementary school and went on to trying to figure out more interesting things, like how to beat Zelda :P

It's unfortunate that the old rule the young. Maybe this swine flu thing will mutate into something deadly and kill off all those elderly fuckers deciding our fates for us up on the hill.

Re:Other findings.

[linzeal]

BTW, these are the sort of geocities pages we need to archive.

Re:Other findings.

[Anonymous Coward]

2.5 Harry Potter Books.

Re:Other findings.

[maxume]

We ate (nearly) everything larger than a turkey. We also eat those.

Re:Other findings.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the Big Bang Revolving Door Theory, Big Bang in, Big Bang out.

Re:Other findings.

[Jeff DeMaagd]

That's not the whole argument.

The show I saw pointed out that there were fewer and fewer fossils being found the closer they get to K-T event. The claim was that there are twice as many known fossils 5-6 million years before than there are 2-3 million years before. I don't know if your suggested statistical side effect explains that.

And they pointed out that lots of frog species seemed to survive pretty easily even though they are very sensitive to acid rain, forest fires and other such things that would have happened if the K-T impact was the primary explanation of extinction.

Re:Other findings.

[radtea]

And they pointed out that lots of frog species seemed to survive pretty easily even though they are very sensitive to acid rain, forest fires and other such things that would have happened if the K-T impact was the primary explanation of extinction.

We know from relatively solid physical evidence what the size and composition of the KT impact object was. We know its effects were world-wide, and we know those effects would have caused acid rain, forest fires, etc.

What we do not know is how the world-wide frog population would have responded to such an event. We don't even know why the frog population is in decline worldwide today.

To hold up the survival of frogs, whose biology is complex and whose interaction with and response to extreme environments is very poorly understood, as a counter-argument against the preponderance of relatively simple physical evidence of world-wide effects from a large impact event is an extremely weak rhetorical move, which looks to me more like misdirection than actual argument.

Re:Other findings.

[Bob-taro]

People want to cling to the K/T extinction being a mystery for some reason. It just isn't anymore.

"There appears to have been some mass extinctions around this time. A huge asteroid impact could cause that. Here's evidence of a huge asteroid impact around that time. Case closed."

It seems that in some branches of science, we accept "plausible" as "proven". Sure there may be some pretty good evidence that an asteroid impact caused mass extinctions, but are there any other explanations? Here's a case where someone points out some data inconsistent with the prevalent theory, and we say, "it doesn't NECESSARILY disprove the theory, so we can ignore it". In other branches of science, we would strive for, "we can ABSOLUTELY explain this data", or we'd have to change or qualify the theory.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

The fossil record goes through good and bad patches. Very few people suggests this actually corresponds to real biodiversity. The second-to-last (Campanian) stage of the Late Cretaceous is very good in a lot of places, whereas the stages both earlier (Santonian) and later (Maastrichtian) are not so good. In fact, the Maatstrichtian deposits show more diversity than any pre-Campanian deposit in the Late Cretaceous. What we are probably looking at is a spectacularly good stage for preservation in the Campanian, followed by merely decent one in the Maastrichtian.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

Sorry, but it really seems like you're talking out of your arse. You do not prove things in any science, you come up with falsifiable theories, and test them out. The more falsifiable the better. It is also clear that you are not at all familiar with the research in the area. The bolide impact theory has a lot of interface with the data, and is immensely falsifiable. It has enormous explanatory power, and is not at this moment falsified by any data.

Could it be wrong? Sure it could! But coming up with little pet theories about what "killed the dinosaurs" is not going to cut it, and neither are tired and refuted arguments like the one above.

These arguments are trashed out in the literature, you just have to look at it.

Re:Other findings.

[pnewhook]

It seems that in some branches of science, we accept "plausible" as "proven". Sure there may be some pretty good evidence that an asteroid impact caused mass extinctions, but are there any other explanations?

Sure. If extraterrestrial aliens knew the asteroid was going to impact Earth the may have said "Wow the Earth's ecosystem is going to be destroyed. We should preserve as much as we can". They then proceeded to evacuate as many animals as possible which explains the decline in the fossil record before the impact (especially if several galaxies were given the go-ahead to pilfer animals).

There are probably genetic descendants of the dinosaurs in zoos and geo-formed planetary habitats all across the galaxy right now.

Re:Other findings.

[Reziac]

How does this relate to some dinosaurs possibly being warm-blooded??

Differences in adaptability -- some advantages either way -- am wondering how this might have affected the die-off event.

Re:Other findings.

[wastedlife]

At the moment, the King's edict is that the imperial fuckload is larger. However, a metric shit-tonne remains larger still. You could pour 4,516 gill of treacle into a barrel and it would only weigh about half a shit-tonne.

Re:Other findings.

[pbhj]

How many samples do you have covering that 10 million year period? Assuming they are related to modern Coleoidea then there numbers are likely to fluctuate in similar ways - ie sometime change vastly from year to year by location.

I really can't see you'd have enough samples, even of Ammonoidea, with verified dates (with a narrow enough error range) from diverse regions to show anything about the trend in global numbers at all.

How many species then did you use that were declining and were not declining? How many samples of each of these were used?

Re:Other findings.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm confused. Is that larger or smaller than a metric fuckload of evidence?

Good lord, man, you certainly are confused.

The standard American fuck-ton, colloquially referred to as a fuckload, is SAE and not metric. It's originally derived from the English Imperial arse-load, but completely unrelated to the modern European metric buttload, which originates in the Adriatic and spread to European through France by way of the mediterranean.

Perhaps you are thinking of a shitload rather than a fuckload? That's derived from the French buttload and exists in both metric and SAE formats

--Charlie

Re:Other findings.

[inasity_rules]

[...] We don't even know why the frog population is in decline worldwide today.[..]

High school biology class and science projects. Duh!

Re:Other findings.

[CorporateSuit]

Please, treat all, "the meteorite didn't kill the dinosaurs!" articles and papers (even if they're in peer-reviewed journals) with extreme scepticism. They are almost always embarrassingly myopic or out of date. There is an imperial fuckload of evidence that the bolide impact did it.

What about the abundance of evidence that a meteorite didn't hit the earth with enough impact/fallout/nuclear winter to wipe out every reptile? (Exhibit A: Reptiles) I think that warrants consideration for alternative theories. I could write a comic book about how the meteorite caused dinosaurs to mutate and grow feathers (the energy to grow these feathers shrunk the dinosaurs) that agrees with the data more than the "meteorite killed everything. Except alligators, tortoises, monitors, snakes, iguanas, and archaeoptrix's offspring who had grown enough feathers by this point, and all the fish in the ocean that global warming is, like, totally extincting right now. (But it did extinct the plesiosaur)" Try common sense before groupthink.

Re:Other findings.

[nyctopterus]

"Groupthink"? Oh please. This issue is discussed over and over in the literature. The impact hit large animals with high energy requirements hardest, and everything else hard. Hence you get big things with moderate to high metabolisms going extinct completely, and many, many smaller things going extinct as well. If you were small, you had a chance. If you were big, but had low energy requirements, you had a chance. If you were big, and had high energy requirements, you had little to no chance. This is the pattern of the extinction, and it matches the impact theory.

I see this over and over again on Slashdot: the assumption that scientists are complete fools who have not managed to think of some simple gotcha you do seconds into thinking about a topic. THEY DO, they also look at a bunch of stuff you haven't thought of, and test it as well.

Re:Other findings.

[tnk1]

Let's be clear here. There are certain things that happen which pretty much require a certain outcome. If we accept that there was actually an impact event such that created the crater found at the Yucatan at the time suggested, it almost is "case closed". It's like saying, "well there were a significant amount of deaths in Hiroshima Province in 1945, and there also just happened to be an atomic bomb set off then too."

It is instructive to consider what the effects of the initial impact would be almost immediately.

The impact that created this crater has been calculated to have been about 17.5 km in diameter, with a density of dense rock (~2700 kg/m3). It probably hit the atmosphere at a velocity of about 20 km/s. Angle of impact would have been about 45 degrees or so. We assume a water impact in about 100m of water. These are good estimates that can be derived from the crater dimensions as well as deposits in rock strata.

Calculations courtesy of the Impact Effects Generator: (http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/)

The actual thermal effects of the impact, which would begin as soon as the object entered the atmosphere would have the following effects at 1000 miles:

Time for maximum radiation: 11.9 seconds after impact

The fireball appears 5.01 times larger than the sun
Thermal Exposure: 2.10 x 107 Joules/m2
Duration of Irradiation: 3090 seconds
Radiant flux (relative to the sun): 6.78

Effects of Thermal Radiation:

Much of the body suffers third degree burns
Newspaper ignites
Plywood flames
Deciduous trees ignite
Grass ignites

The Air Blast effects at this range would be:

The air blast will arrive at approximately 4880 seconds.
Peak Overpressure: 133000 Pa = 1.33 bars = 18.9 psi
Max wind velocity: 215 m/s = 480 mph
Sound Intensity: 102 dB (May cause ear pain)
Damage Description:

Multistory wall-bearing buildings will collapse.
Wood frame buildings will almost completely collapse.
Highway truss bridges will collapse.
Glass windows will shatter.
Up to 90 percent of trees blown down; remainder stripped of branches and leaves.

Seismic Effects:

The major seismic shaking will arrive at approximately 322 seconds.
Richter Scale Magnitude: 10.4 (This is greater than any earthquake in recorded history)

Needless to say, almost everything of any significant size with any exposure to the open air at 1000 miles is dead or in its final minutes of existence. Deeply burrowing creatures and certainly insects might be able to get out of the way of the initial onslaught somehow, but mostly, they're dead too.

This ignores the actual ejecta from the crater itself, and the effects of the instant continent-sized forest/grass firestorm that was just lit off.

The immediate event itself might not have been enough to end all dinosaurs immediately, but it probably would have qualified as a mass extinction event all by itself without any need

Re:Other findings.

[Burnhard]

You're talking about stepwise regressions, yes. These were taken into account.

Re:Other findings.

[wastedlife]

How many cubic handbreadths of dark ale equals one arse-load again? I have 68 furlongs to drive home and I need to know how much Guinness to bring. I know I can drink about a third of an arse-load in 26 furlongs, but the stupid store here sells by the cubic handbreadth and my phone does not have the proper conversion tools. Damn technology does everything in the world as long as it isn't useful.

Re:Other findings.

[CorporateSuit]

The impact hit large animals with high energy requirements hardest, and everything else hard. Hence you get big things with moderate to high metabolisms going extinct completely, and many, many smaller things going extinct as well. If you were small, you had a chance. If you were big, but had low energy requirements, you had a chance. If you were big, and had high energy requirements, you had little to no chance. This is the pattern of the extinction, and it matches the impact theory.

You argue that large animals with high energy requirements take aggro from the impact -- odd inference -- you took two observations, obtusely linked them, and said it proves your claim. "Mass Extinction" possibly happened over a very long period of time. The only arguments I've heard against this were probability calculators -- which, frankly, have Zero place in paleontology. We know a number of things that did go extinct and a number of things that survived. Our grip on what life was like 65 million years ago is threadbare and capricious. Watch old 80's documentaries on dinosaurs, then 90's documentaries, then the latest you can find. The fact you rule things out with inference and saying "EVERYBODY IN THE WHOLE WORLD KNOWS THIS HYPOTHESIS IS TRUE. THEY'RE SCIENTISTS" screams groupthink so loud I can't hear anything else you're trying to say.

Re:Other findings.

[mjwx]

How many cubic handbreadths of dark ale equals one arse-load again? I have 68 furlongs to drive home and I need to know how much Guinness to bring. I know I can drink about a third of an arse-load in 26 furlongs, but the stupid store here sells by the cubic handbreadth and my phone does not have the proper conversion tools. Damn technology does everything in the world as long as it isn't useful.

Yes but the OP was referring to metric fuckloads, which equals roughly 1.6 imperial fuckloads or exactly 10 metric arseloads where as the imperial fuckload contains approximately fourteen and three half imperial gutfulls.

BTW, bring Pilsner instead of stout or dark ale, you will get 34 more furlongs to the Sydharb

Re:Other findings.

[Bigjeff5]

It's unfortunate that the old rule the young.

Only a fool can't recognize the advantages of many years of experience for those in a position of power.

That said, just cause you're experienced doesn't mean you aren't still a fool, and I agree with your sentiment that pretty much everyone, or at least a large majority, up on capitol hill are old fools who need to be replaced with people outside the political system.

I wouldn't replace them with young 20-somthings though, my god have you seen our generation? I'd rather keep who we have, thanks.

But of course

[DynaSoar]

"some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s)"

If some dinosaurs hadn't survived it/them, we wouldn't have birds.

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Some LARGE dinosaurs survived.
Where are the 50 ton birds?

Re:But of course

[StuckInSyrup]

That is the result when someone learns evolution by watching Jurassic park.
Birds and dinosaurs coexisted pretty long. After the extinction, more birds than dinosaurs survived. The whole notion of "dinosaurs evolved into birds" only means that late dinosaurs and birds share a common ancestor. It's not like some dinosaurs observed the post-apocalyptic mayhem around them and decided to evolve into birds.

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yo moma comes to mind

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

What next, you are going to tell me that this isn't accurate?

Re:But of course

[Tony Hoyle]

That's what gets taught in schools unfortunately.. especially the 'decided to evolve' bit, like a dinosaur woke up one day and thought it would grow some feathers for a change. Many people retain this view through adulthood.

Ever heard the whole silly 'a cow fell into the sea and became a whale' idea? Straight out of school textbooks.. I can remember being taught it myself.

The problem education makes is it dumbs things down for children then ignores the issue when they grow up - then some nutjob comes along, points out how silly the version they understand is therefore 'evolution' must be wrong, and we get the whole debate starting again. Maybe teaching 8 year olds about random genetic mutation might be a bit much, but by the time they are 15 they should be able to handle it.

Re:But of course

[drinkypoo]

The subject of the summary says "some large dinosaurs..." (emphasis obviously mine) which makes your objection (and all the other ones just like it) fucking stupid. Don't quote (or make up quotes) out of context to serve your ego.

Re:But of course

[VShael]

Yeah, evolution should be taught like evolution.

Simple concepts first, when they are young.
More complex concepts later, when they are older.

But definitely, teach them simple concepts.

You don't start sex-ed by teaching them about the Stork bringing children. You tell them that when a mammy and daddy love each other very much, and want to have a baby, they hug in a very special way...

Re:But of course

[V!NCENT]

And what about the crocodiles?

Re:But of course

[drinkypoo]

You tell them that when a mammy and daddy love each other very much, and want to have a baby, they hug in a very special way...

That's good, start lying to them young. That's really worked out well for us so far.

Re:But of course

[SalaSSin]

I don't know where you went to school, but we always learned basic genetics in biology class, starting from 2nd year secondary school (14 years old).

Re:But of course

[maxume]

Our early ancestors ate them.

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think it is that dangerous to hear about things you don't understand, it's just out of comprehension for those that run schools...

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Awww crap.

What am I going to do with these 35 Anal bead sets and ball gags? I was supposed to teach 3rd grade Sex ed this week...

Dammit! Let me guess, you're going to tell me that scat and explaining the dirty sanchez is out as well..

Damn you Conservatives!

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

well, "hug in a very special way..." sounds much better than "What didn't get shot into mommy's face became you" or "You are what didn't leak out"

Or in your case, "Your daddy was the one who could afford mommy for the whole night"

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

Oversimplification is not lying.

Well, actually, you might call it that - I think it's called "lies-to-children" in the "Science of Discworld" books by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, but they provide an explanation and a reasoning for the term, and suffice to say that they use the word "lie" to denote information you know to be false - not to imply an intent to keep someone in the dark.

Thinking back to my school years, I learnt about Newtonian physics before I learnt about special relativity. Was that wrong? Certainly not.

Oversimplifying things for children is fine. Just don't tell them things that are outright *false* (such as the stork in the above example); and also, once they reach a certain age, make sure they understand that they ARE getting an oversimplification and why.

Re:But of course

[camperdave]

It's not like some dinosaurs observed the post-apocalyptic mayhem around them and decided to evolve into birds.

Maybe they did. 65 million years would wipe out all traces of their genetics labs, and rocket launch facilities.

Re:But of course

[drinkypoo]

Thinking back to my school years, I learnt about Newtonian physics before I learnt about special relativity. Was that wrong? Certainly not.

Well, sticking with the example at hand; Newtonian physics work in every case the average person will ever encounter. But telling children a "special hug" can result in children can only cause confusion. Next thing you know they'll be afraid to hug their hairy-nosed uncle. While the person who constructed the example has attempted to defend his poorly-chosen example it is a particularly excellent example of the kind of thing we're talking about here, so I'm going to stick with it. Besides, I don't believe him anyway.

Oversimplifying things for children is fine. Just don't tell them things that are outright *false* (such as the stork in the above example);

The hug is no less false than the stork. You don't even have to be face to face to make a baby. You (and the OP) are attempting to create a distinction between falsehoods which does not exist, which was the very point of my comment to begin with. He accuses me of missing the point in his comment; it is clear that you both have missed the point of mine.

and also, once they reach a certain age, make sure they understand that they ARE getting an oversimplification and why.

Yes, I agree. That age is birth. More literally, when they are old enough to be asking you questions, they are old enough to be told that they are being given enough information for the time being. If you are not going to tell them the truth, then certainly you should be telling them that you are not telling them the truth.

I don't know what age you think is a good time to stop lying to children, but please allow me to assure you that they are living, thinking creatures even before they can really understand the repercussions of childbirth (you know, sometime around the age of 30 or 40 is when that usually happens — if ever) and if you lie to them you will only hold them back.

Now, I'm not talking about stuff like Santa Claus or Jesus — that's a separate diatribe. I'm talking about real questions with real answers. This is one of those cases. If you're so afraid to tell your children what genitals are for that you have to lie to them about where babies come from, you've probably got some serious fucking problems ahead of you. And speaking of which, have you noticed that teen pregnancy is on the rise in the USA?

Re:But of course

[Hognoxious]

Ever heard the whole silly 'a cow fell into the sea and became a whale' idea? Straight out of school textbooks.. I can remember being taught it myself.

I wasn't taught anything resembling that, ever. But I didn't go to a shitty school.

Re:But of course

[Hognoxious]

I'm not a paleontologist, but my understanding is that crocodiles aren't descended from dinosaurs. They're a separate branch that coexisted with them.

And the subject was large dinosaurs. Crocodiles aren't that big, comparatively.

Re:But of course

[nedlohs]

And speaking of which, have you noticed that teen pregnancy is on the rise in the USA?

All that damn hugging, that's what that is.

Re:But of course

[Jason Levine]

Unless you teach sex-ed in an all-girl's catholic school. True story: My wife taught in one of those (Health class, no less). Luckily for her, they brought in an outside speaker to do the sex ed segment. Not so luckily, the woman starts in with disinformation like "condoms contain tiny holes which will let sperm and viruses through." This woman was seriously trying to scare the kids into never using condoms with the goal that they would rely on abstinence!

My wife was so angry that she walked out of the room for the remainder of the segment. At least one student came up to my wife afterwords and asked if it was true. My wife was afraid to go against the "church teaching" that this outside woman was apparently giving, but also didn't want to help spread disinformation. She tried to subtly steer the student into doing her own research. My wife also objected to her principal about it who denied that the woman had ever said anything like this before. Since my wife left the school later on (unrelated reasons), we don't know if this woman was brought back.

I understand that, in a religious-based school, abstinence will be taught as the best method possible (and yes, it is 100% effective), but giving the kids blatant misinformation like that isn't going to help them. It just means that, should they decide to have sex, they'll just skip the condom (why use it if it has holes?) and will get an STD or will get pregnant.

Re:But of course

[drinkypoo]

I understand that, in a religious-based school, abstinence will be taught as the best method possible (and yes, it is 100% effective)

There are ways to introduce semen into the vagina that don't involve penile insertion.

Thus, abstinence from sex is not a guarantee. As if we needed any more evidence that teaching abstinence-only is not realistic? I realize that you're not backing that horse (at least not in your comment above) but come on, your statement is erroneous. Only abstinence from all sexual activity is 100% guaranteed to prevent STDs and pregnancy. (Arguably, it's kind of hypocritical for Christians to claim that abstinence from sexual activity is 100% guaranteed to prevent pregnancy, though) :D

Re:But of course

[jollyreaper]

You don't start sex-ed by teaching them about the Stork bringing children. You tell them that when a mammy and daddy love each other very much, and want to have a baby, they hug in a very special way...

I'd love to see that excuse before the judge. "Your honor, I was just hugging her in a very special way. You're not about to legislate from the bench over how we might express our feelings, right?"

Re:But of course

[pwfffff]

I hope you realize you're a giant asshole.

"When I was a child my mother couldn't afford good meat so we were forced to eat gruel every day."

"I had steak every night. But I didn't have shitty parents."

Re:But of course

[geekboy642]

Well yes, but a 99.999999998% guarantee puts virgin birth well inside the margin of error.

Re:But of course

[V!NCENT]

"Crocodiles, like dinosaurs, have the abdominal ribs modified into gastralia" -Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile

Re:But of course

[Toonol]

That's a simplification, not a lie. Kind of like telling 4th graders that you can't take the square root of -1. The subtle details come later.

Re:But of course

[Anonymous Coward]

After watching too much pornotube "hug in a very special way" doesn't seem so special, seems rather repetitive and mundane, definitely requires something new and refreshing even experimental!

Re:But of course

[Jason Levine]

Ok, if a teen goes for In-Vitro Fertilization, yes they can get pregnant. As far as getting pregnant "the old-fashioned way", though, abstaining from sex is more effective than relying on birth control. When my sons get to that age, however, I don't plan on pushing an abstinence-only view. I will tell them that having sex is a serious step in a relationship that can have serious consequences. I'll let them know that they should only have sex with someone that they are really committed to and they should use condoms (even if the girl's on the pill) should they decide to have sex. I'd even be willing to go to the store and buy my sons condoms though I realize they might find that a bit creepy. (Kind of like the time my dad tried to bond with me by turning on the Playboy channel. There are just some things you don't want to share with your dad!!!)

Oh, and we're Jewish so we don't need to worry about any virgin birth hypocritical-ness. ;-)

Re:But of course

[lgw]

Oh, I think "Hognoxious" realizes that he's an obnoxious pig.

Also, it *is* parents responsibility to raise their children well. Can only afford gruel? Don't have children! Can't afford that mortgage? Don't buy a house! Can't afford your credit card payments? Stop buying stuff!

Man, forget teaching evolution - how about we teach the fundamentals of responsible behavior!

Re:But of course

[ZFox]

The hug is no less false than the stork. You don't even have to be face to face to make a baby.

Are you implying you must be face-to-face to hug?

Re:But of course

[Chosen Reject]

I can't make out the point of your comment. Are you trying to refute the GP with that quote? Mice, like humans, have mammary glands. Does that mean we are descended from mice? Or could it be that we are both separate branches that coexist with each other?

Re:But of course

[V!NCENT]

Or could it be that we are both separate branches that coexist with each other?

Yup. I wasn't trying to refute anything...

GP:

If some dinosaurs hadn't survived it/them, we wouldn't have birds.

So the point being taken here, by me, neither would we have crocodiles since they are alike:

"Crocodiles, like dinosaurs, have the abdominal ribs modified into gastralia" -Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile

I was just adding upon...

Re:But of course

[Randle_Revar]

Better to say "non-avian dinosaurs"

Re:But of course

[nicodoggie]

Next thing you know they'll be afraid to hug their hairy-nosed uncle.

Hmmm... I dunno if this is a bad thing. Maybe little girls need to be a afraid to hug their hairy-nosed uncles a bit...

Pleoscene Age

[srussia]

Alas, some small dinosaurs that made it to the Pleoscene Age that has now ended, are also now extinct.

Surprising?

[TFer_Atvar]

After reading the abstract, it sounds very interesting. I do have one big question: Do the remains show any difference from similar specimens prior to the K-T boundary? When you have small, isolated populations, you tend to get rapid evolution to suit the species to that specific area. If this small group of animals survived in an isolated fashion, I'd expect some sort of physiological drift from the mainline in order to compensate for their unique area.

If they don't show much difference, I have to wonder what, if anything, this says about the K-T event itself; whether it created a long-term climatological change in addition to a catastrophic change evidenced by the K-T geologic boundary. I'm also intrigued by the fact that these specimens were found in Colorado/New Mexico, which is pretty darn close to the best impact site candidate. I'd expect any animals that survived to be much further away.

Re:Surprising?

[MichaelSmith]

I'm also intrigued by the fact that these specimens were found in Colorado/New Mexico, which is pretty darn close to the best impact site candidate. I'd expect any animals that survived to be much further away.

I suppose its possible that they migrated there from further away. I wonder if the impact created opportunities for animals further away to move towards the impact site, similar to the way floods can improve the fertility of soil.

Re:Surprising?

[smoker2]

The K-T boundary is not a simple line defining before and after. It is a phenomenon that took place over time - the estimated occurrence of the event was 65.5 (+||- 0.3)Ma. That is a 600,000 year margin, and when you consider that the earliest human species (read as - only just not monkeys) were at the most 2 million years old, it is not unreasonable to theorise that the causative event did not represent a definite cut off point for any species. Things can change a lot in 600K years. And it is also a dangerous habit to take estimated figures and then apply them to suit your own hypothesis too rigorously. Chinese whispers and all that. As somebody else posted further up, it would be more of a surprise to NOT find specimens outside of the accepted period.

You don't have to be so insulting!!

[rts008]

Yes, some of us did survive the "alleged 'K-T' Extinction"! And your suppositions bring us *much* hilarity.

Our day has come!
Oh, yes...try and laugh, humans; But in bitterness you shall weep!

We have usurped your world's economy with 'Flintstone's Vitamins'!
Be prepared to bow down to your new Tasty Dinosaur Overlords!

signed, Dino.
*sees Fat Freddie, and runs for driveway* "Yaap!1 Yip! Yappy-kiyay, motherfscker!"-fires AT-4 against Fred-n-Barney*

Re:You don't have to be so insulting!!

[Mr2cents]

Everyone who reads Dilbert already knows this. They're hiding behind the couch.

Re:You don't have to be so insulting!!

[rts008]

The couch, while being shaped/passed off as a cake, is....a lie!!
So, none of you have had the 'couch cover' working as you had assumed.
Start running, the timer has started.
*note: if you wait for the couch to explode...you are sadly, way too late*

BTW, don't fsck with a Real Engineer(tm)! (not talking about software/electrical-pseudo/wannabe engineers...how lame!)

Oh, careful where you jump to avoid the booby-trapped couch that is rigged***....;-)....[don't bother wasting inadequate brain-power on what's beyond the couch!-you were already fscked before you were aware of the couch!]

***My personal best is a self-induced 100% kill of 23 enemy 'jumping/fleeing' from one 'safe' spot to another after setting off the original ambush...eight frikken times!...w00t!
(set off original ambush, then 'survivors'(Hah!Hah!) in order as planned, fell 1, 2, 3,...) Not very sporting, but I am not foolish enough to gamble with other lives(my team) solely for sport.

'Eager Lt.' set off the first Willy Peter grenade via a tripwire, then, the survivors were consumed by our chaos...the unfortunate fsckers set off eight more of my 'surprises' trying to escape the first one...no survivors! An effective mix of C-4, Claymores, and a .45 ACP Gov't. Model 1911 semi-auto pistol @10-12 meters!-had 6 out of 7 rounds left in the magazine when the smoke cleared!-)
It only lasted 46 seconds, from start to finish. 'Wham, BAM, Fsck You, man!'
That particular 'Hang out with the STASI, and keep them entertained' while we exited-stage left...the operation enabled 'us' to rescue nine East German scientists from E. Berlin that had requested asylum, but were denied(for political reasons between USA and W.Germ. at that time), and were in danger for having made the request. We had the Op Order, and debarked before we knew the request was denied. You can only decide based on what info you have at the time. :-)

Hide behind your couch, Dino!...Heh! Heh! Oh, yeah, you are perfectly safe! Heh! Heh!
Circa:1979-1980 in E. Berlin...Good Riddance, you STASI bastards!

'Master Craftsmen' are such a delight to watch in action, no matter their trade!!

Re:You don't have to be so insulting!!

[Mindcontrolled]

The stuff you are smoking... Can I have some?

Re:You don't have to be so insulting!!

[drinkypoo]

Hide behind your couch, Dino!...Heh! Heh! Oh, yeah, you are perfectly safe! Heh! Heh!
Circa:1979-1980 in E. Berlin...Good Riddance, you STASI bastards!

Yow! Zippy, is that you?

cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[Dr_Snugglebunny]

2 points to be aware of: 1. The journal this is published in is not held in high esteem by most paleontologists. This may be telling; I imagine the paper was rejected by several other journals before ending up here. Peer review seems a little light at PE. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but calls for caution. 2. Everything hangs on the authors' interpretation of the age of the sediments; the bones don't seem reworked (i.e. moved around from older sediments), which is one source of error, but he could be wrong with the radiometric age estimation, which even in the best cases has a moderate margin of error. BUT it remains an interesting question of any dinosaurs survived long past the extinction; most of our picture of the K-T event comes from central/western North America, so who knows what happened elsewhere.

Re:cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[Burnhard]

Peer review seems a little light at PE. That doesn't mean it's wrong, but calls for caution.

It seems a pity that more people don't recognise this when other kinds of paper are published elsewhere (for example, concerning the `Science' of Climate Change). Please mod me troll ;).

Re:cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[Anonymous Coward]

Far from troll. One of the biggest sources of misinformation is popular science journalism which copy content without noting these vital elements.

Re:cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[laughing_badger]

Equally, it is a pity that some poorly written papers and a huge amount of media hype has lead to people putting Science in quotation marks when talking about climate change.

Re:cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[CraftyJack]

Good catch on point 1. Big news in a minor publication...hmm. The [online/electronic/free] Journal of anything should raise a little bit of suspicion. Maybe QC is up to par, or maybe it isn't.

Re:cautionary notes from a paleo geek

[der wachter]

If the publication of the K-T event recast was in a less than reputable journal, is that sufficient evidence to support the notional eguivalent that a K-Y event did not occur in earlier publication attempts?

My name is Der Wachter and I am a recovering academic. . . .

Anonymous human

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not laughing mr Dino! Please don't kill me.

They survived because of God...

[VinylRecords]

I mean geez people haven't you been keeping up with the latest issues of Creationism Quarterly!
This stuff is "Peer-reviewed by degreed scientists" it says so right on the website!
It has "Scholarly articles representing the major scientific disciplines" scientific disciplines like: biology, chemistry, theology, creationism! Duh!
"Emphasis on scientific evidence supporting: intelligent design, a recent creation, and a catastrophic worldwide flood"!

http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq.html /sarcasmbrainmelting

Re:They survived because of God...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, Science requires a Statement of Belief, http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq.html. Nothing like good ol' fashioned science where you have to "Believe" the main axioms of your discipline.

Re:They survived because of God...

[Anonymous Coward]

no no...they were in the great valley!
I bed my tail one of them was called "littlefoot"!

Maybe.

[denzacar]

Jesus sure did.

That explains this dinosaur sighting!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.bkfk.com/Modules/Teachers/inventors/mothers_images/leach.jpg

Obvious solution...

[denzacar]

"Finding conclusive evidence, however, is a difficult matter when the crime scene is 65 million years old".

Two words - Horatio Caine.

Re:Obvious solution...

[BabyDave]

"Tyranno-saur-us, but did anyone ... [puts on shades] ... see them?"

[The Who] Bwaaaaaaaaoooo ba ba! (etc)

Re:Obvious solution...

[VShael]

You know when he takes his glasses off, and looks to the side? He's reading cue cards. Watch for it.

It's obvious once you're aware of it.

Re:Obvious solution...

[Anonymous Coward]

What? They can't afford tele-prompters?

Re:Obvious solution...

[denzacar]

A whiteboard is far cheaper, reusable, works without electricity and over time its carbon footprint verges on and over negative.

You have to offset those black humvees somehow...

Re:Obvious solution...

[moosesocks]

You know when he takes his glasses off, and looks to the side? He's reading cue cards. Watch for it.

It's obvious once you're aware of it.

See for yourself (over and over).

I love the internet.

Not quite

[EdibleEchidna]

"If this theory holds up, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age."

Nope, these are the only ones we have found evidence of surviving to the Paleocene Age so far. There may be others we don't know about yet.

Creationists like this piece of news...

[__aarvde6843]

I read once about a "museum" from some fanatic creationist that put human beings and dinosaurs together in the same period. I hope they don't get their hopes up with this piece of news ;)

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[drinkypoo]

Please don't lump the idea of dinosaurs and humans coexisting in with creationism. While many creationists erroneously point to evidence of coexistence of humans and dinos as supporting creationism, this is pure nonsense. By the same token, the fact that creationists believe that humans and dinos coexisted doesn't have anything to do with whether it's true or not.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get you point, but are there any serious, non-creationist, theories about dinosaur and human coexistence?

The way I understand it, even if TFA is true, we still have a more than 60 million year gap in the fossil records.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[dbIII]

Crikey! Just imagine what would happen if six metre long carnivorous reptiles co-existed with humans!
Creationism is just Christianity Lite anyway. If they actually read the entire book they wouldn't get so obsessed with timescales.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[ElectricTurtle]

If a one backward idea is conflated with another in a forest and nobody hears it, does anybody give a crap?

I mean seriously, human/dinosaur coexistence and creationism both fly in the face of scientific evidence, and because creationists cling to the former so desperately to find some way to wrap their tiny heads around the fossil record, they have effectively made it a subset of their own claptrap. Who cares? Why would anybody want such an unsound 'theory' to stand by itself anyway? Nobody's rushing to pick up that one alone at baggage claim.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[drinkypoo]

If they actually read the entire book they wouldn't get so obsessed with timescales.

You're assuming that they are mentally equipped to deal with the inherent contradictions, some of which are deliberate and in fact whole books of the christian bible consist of apologia/revision of older books. You can't treat the Bible like a manual, and that's the mistake that too many make. No amount of reading or rereading will help if they can't get over this one simple issue.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[pbhj]

[...] in fact whole books of the christian bible consist of apologia/revision of older books. [...]

Examples?

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I had mod points you would have been modded up. Outside America, we don't really understand why so many American christians are so hung up on the "creationism" thing..

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[Anonymous Coward]

You know that whole "Noah" business? Low quality rip-off of part of the Epic of Gilgamesh, which in turn was a retelling of a Sumerian myth, of which the oldest known tablets telling the story are nearly 4,000 years old--far, far older than the oldest estimates of the Old Testament.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[inasity_rules]

Try to answer GPs question, AC. GP asked for examples of contradictions/revisions.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Contradiction: Order of events in Genesis 1 and 2 is a favorite of mine; right of the top the authors were saying "don't take this literally."

Revisions: you're not serious, are you? Okay, fine, I'll bite. The New King James Bible is a revision of the King James Bible, a revision of earlier texts; the protestant Bibles are revisions of Catholic ones (Deuterocanon/apocrypha, Vulgate vs other translations), Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, Egyptian Orthodox, etc. all have their own revisions. Just off the top of my head we've got the Councils of Trent, Carthage, Nicea I and II, Ephesus, and Constantinoples I, II, and III, of which a part of each was deciding what was in the Bible and what wasn't, and which translation(s) to use (oh and interpretation, interpretation, meaning, and more interpretation). Then going further back than that there was considerable spitting over what was in the Torah or not. Yahweh's consort Asherah eventually got the short end of the stick despite scads of temples devoted to the Godly couple (monotheism my ass). Then there's the aforementioned modding of the myth of Utnapishtim/Ziusudra/Atrahasis/and eventually Noah.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[inasity_rules]

Thank you.

Though you are not quite correct. Modern non catholic translations can not be considered "revisions" of catholic translations; more parallel translations. Also, translation does not (always)=revision and I have found most translators try to be objective.

I am not here to comment on interpretations of Genesis 1, I'd merely hoped to watch an intelligent discussion. Drinkypoo (is that you?) seemed to imply that some books within the bible were revisions of others, which caught my interest. But perhaps I misread.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm not drinkypoo. I just never bothered to get an account, and after six-seven years, eh, what's the point? I disagree about the difference between parallel translations and revisions, but still there are differences which is the major point: persons expousing Biblical inerrancy and literalism generally have an abysmal grasp of its history and arguably contents, message, etc...which no, I'm not necessarily accusing you of. It just bugs the shit out of me. As for the point of books being revisions of other books, there is something along those lines that I am aware of. The foursome of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not all written by member's of Jesus' original posse. Matthew and Luke used Mark's narrative (who also may or may not have been there) plus a hypothetical "Q document." Matthew having expropriated a large chunk of Mark, Luke less so but also using other sources in addition. A minority say instead that Matthew was first, Luke expounded on it, and Mark is a mashup of the two. That all four could be secondary tellings of a similar story or myth isn't too surprising given the earliest any of them is though to be written is 70AD, about 40 years after the events allegedly happened. A minority view puts the dates of authorship 10-20 years earlier than that, but still there's a good couple of decades in between to muck about edit revise, steal and modify.

Re:Creationists like this piece of news...

[inasity_rules]

It was over 5 years before I got an account... With the recent security debacle where we all ended up in the wrong accounts, not getting one was probably a good move on your part... :)

I am aware of the link between the gospels (except John, which some feel is an eye witness account since it has detail consistent with someone who was there). Many credit Paul with the Q document. However, since they agree with each other on all major points, I hardly think that qualifies as "revision", more like retelling. In any case, I do not support blindly taking everything literally or the infallibility of the bible. Though, with few exceptions, when passages are taken in context, there are surprisingly few contradictions for such a - as you would say - "revised" book. However it is a translation from a more complex language into a dumbed down language. Therefore translations are fallible before even looking at source materials. However, I do accept its message, for personal reasons which are extremely good and completely rational. I won't go into them here, however, this is not the place. In any case, like most rational human beings, we will most likely have to agree to disagree

So was anyone else...

[Anonymous Coward]

...trying to read the noahsark tag as something shark-related?
noashark indeed.

Re:So was anyone else...

[koiransuklaa]

That's a new mount option, right? I'll start using that right away, I don't want my filesystems wasting time updating those shark stamps on my files.

Abybody who knows CowboyNeal...

[Chrisq]

Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction

Abybody who knows CowboyNeal would see this as old news

metastable climate

[dltaylor]

It continues to dismay me how many really don't get it. The impact, or impact+major vulcanism (BTW, what order were those in, and could the impact have pinged the earth hard enough to initiate a major volcanic event at whatever the interval?), didn't kill the dinosaurs by direct effect. They didn't all die in a week or a month, or, even a few decades, centuries, or millennia, most likely.

What happened was a significant enough change in climate in nearly all habitats, over a short enough period of time, that the vast majority of major fauna, particularly dinosaurs, and a lot of the flora simply could not adapt to the new conditions, nor migrate to a location that suited them (nor build bubble cities in which to weather the change). If the birth/death ratio slips below 1 long enough the species is extinct. If it is only slightly less than 1 because the available nutrition is not quite good enough, or there's enough hard dust around to reduce lung efficiency, or the temperatures don't allow eggs to brood quite as well, or some such, then it can take a VERY long time to kill off populations in the tens of millions. Small regions of "better", if not quite "good enough", might easily sustain a very slowly declining ecosystem for hundreds of millennia.

Bottom line, though, is that there are a LOT of dinosaur fossils below the iridium-enriched layer and VERY few, and those not for very long, above it.

Re:metastable climate

[nyctopterus]

Where are you getting your information? I expect what you say is true of small animals, but nearly all non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous were large (large=bigger than a cat, in this context). They almost certainly would have died out in the weeks and months following the impact. I'm not aware of any confirmed non-avian dinosaurs alive after the iridium layer.

Re:metastable climate

[pbhj]

Bottom line, though, is that there are a LOT of dinosaur fossils below the iridium-enriched layer and VERY few, and those not for very long, above it.

How many. I've been trying to find numbers on dinosaur fossils found globally and the dates ascribed to those fossils - do you know where I can get those details?

Re:metastable climate

[dltaylor]

If the Fassett paper holds up to peer review, then those fossils will post-date the iridium layer.

Since the paper has not yet been widely circulated and accepted/rejected, I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt.

There have been a few other reports, although not published papers, AFAIK, of post-K-T boundary dinosaur fossils.

KILLER DINOSAURS WANT YOUR CHILDREN!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://carbags.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/vertheroshot_whitebkg.jpg

Sure, they may have survived the K-T Extinction,

[ancient_kings]

but what about the K-Y Fornification?

Fossil records cannot be show extinction dates

[Manic Miner]

I would have thought this was obvious. The lack of fossils after a certain point in time only shows that there are no fossils. You cannot logically infer anything else from this, other than the fact that you haven't found any newer ones. I'm not saying they didn't die out when they claim, but trying to "prove" a concrete date is going to be neigh on impossible. The reason we haven't find any newer fossils could be for several reasons, they could have all died out, or it could be no more of them were fossilised, or we simply haven't found the newer fossils yet.

Re:Fossil records cannot be show extinction dates

[nyctopterus]

That would be true if the sample is small (which to a certain extent it is). We will never "prove" (proof is for mathematicians) that a bunch of things went extinct on a certain date, but we can built a compelling statistical likelihood.

Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[erroneus]

A few days back, the [god-damned-mother-frikken] History Channel did several hours on predictions of the future and more specifically, December 12, 2012 and I got sucked right into it. By the time their series finished for the night, I was wrecked inside with this horrible feeling of doom. (They put together these very compelling presentations with pictures and music...really sets a dramatic mood! and when you are staying up too late... well even the most resistant people can fall victim I think.)

In any case, the most interesting theory surrounding the projected end of the world day is that the rotational axis of the earth will change resulting in massive geologic events. What's more, they suggested that the earth had gone through this kind of change before and was a potential cause of the mass extinction events in the past.

I don't claim to know much about all that, but I have to remind myself that this was the FIRST time I had heard about rotational axis shifting (but not the first time I had heard of magnetic polar shifting) and definitely the first time I had heard of rotational axis shifting being cited as the cause of mass extinction events.

Who knows more about this than I do? Got anything to debunk or verify what I recall from late-night TV watching?

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[JasterBobaMereel]

12th Dec 2012 ... end of the long cycle count in the Mayan calendar - A time of celebration and considered to be a time of change (like most cycle ends in the calendar) but also considered lucky to witness, research indicated the Mayans considered that nothing significant would happen on this date, except the next cycle would begin, and history would start to repeat from 11 August 3114 BC so expect people to be building some large buildings in stone (Stonehenge, Newgrange, ĦaÄar Qim etc ...) and the reinvention of writing in the not too distant future ...

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[Lumpy]

You think that gave you doom.. Go play single player story mode in Frontlines:fuel of war..

I'm sitting there listening to the cut scenes going... "Wow", they hit some stuff pretty well on pure coincidence alone!

I'm waiting for global World war three. I got my headshots pretty consistent, and If I get hit I just need to hide for 15-20 seconds to heal back up.

and yes, I give a old video game prophecy as much credence in accuracy as some futurist-doom fluff piece on Discovery Channel.

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[ebuck]

Every Dec 31st, a new year comes without apocalypse. Every decade passes without one too. Every century passes without one too. Every millennia passes without one too.

Change calendars to the Jewish calendar. They observe the same lack of apocalypse at the transition to the next month, year, etc. Same goes for the Chinese calendar, why would the Mayan calendar be any different?

Just because bad things eventually happen as the years go by doesn't mean that they're scheduled events. Certainly they are not scheduled hundreds of years in advance by human hands undertaking the decision to structure a calendar this way instead of that way.

Basically it's as eventful as watching your car hit 100,000 miles. An event of sorts, but a contrived one, built up by the coincidences of measurement with a lot of extra man specific meaning.

Discovery Channel has been pushing this sort of pseudo-science and junk pop-culture voodoo for a while now. You'd think they were competing with the Sci-Fi (SyFy) Channel.

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[lgw]

The rotational-axis-changing thing is legit - it's a reasonable hyopthesis. Note that the overall angular momentum of the Earth wouldn't be changing, it's the rotation of the crust "over" the core. I heard this hyopthesis in the late 90s, but since the evidence has mounted that the crust rotates somewhat independently of the core, which makes the whole thing a lot more believable.

Of course, this is geology we're talking about. The axis of rotation for the crust might shift instantly from a geologist's perspective, but that's still slower than walking speed, and might happen any time in the next billion years. 2012 seems unlikely.

The magnetic pole reversal is something to be worried about - it's happening now, there will be an interval (decades at least) when the Earth's magnetic field will be effectively absent, and that could be a soon as a century or two. This seems to me like a threat that some research dollars should be directed to, but unless it can somehow be linked to global warming, it will probably be unfashionable, unfunded, and ignored.

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[erroneus]

Thank you for that. I am now less concerned about H1N1 Swine flu...

Re:Shift in the Earth's rotation?

[penguinchris]

As a geology grad student, I know about this stuff, but it is definitely out of my area of expertise so take it with a grain of salt.

The rotational axis of the earth (besides the crust rotation thing the other replier mentions) can't really change without a massive event causing it. The direction the rotational axis is tilting changes cyclically, but that is different from the axis itself changing.

The theory that the moon formed from ejected material resulting from a bolide impact with the early earth includes the idea that that impact tilted the earth's rotation. I don't know too much about planetary physics, but it seems to make sense that we should not have a tilted axis of rotation, without something hitting us to throw it off.

Now, I think what the other replier may be talking about is the reason that the earth's magnetic pole shifts. The magnetic field is of course produced by the spinning metallic core - that's physics 101 - and the reason the poles shift is because of shifts in the rotation direction of the core relative to the rest of the earth. As the other guy said, when the polarity reverses, there may be some problems (that was sort of the premise of the movie The Core - in the movie the core suddenly stopped spinning, removing the magnetic field).

A few points - neither of these things is going to happen catastrophically. It takes a lot of time, at human scales. So these being the cause of the apocalypse in 2012 is ridiculous.

Next, since a shift in any rotational axis will be slow, no "massive geologic events" will occur. No mass extinctions are seriously thought to have been caused by massive geologic events of the type I assume the show was implying.

Now, if there is an impact large enough to cause a shift in rotation of the earth itself or the core, then sure, we will have something to worry about. Except of course that no one will be thinking about that, because the impact will have wiped out half of the earth anyway.

This reminds me of the great geologic debate of the 17-1800's between proponents of catastrophism and uniformitarianism. Catastrophists thought that all geologic processes happen instantly and catastrophically; meaning at the extreme that mountains rise out of the earth in one big event, Land Before Time style. Uniformitarianists on the other hand thought that nothing ever changed - this was kind of distorted by people who didn't quite understand; the original idea might more readily be called gradualism, meaning things did change, just extremely slowly. But the big fight was between people arguing the two extremes.

There are catastrophic geologic events - earthquakes and volcanoes (and things that may result from those, like tsunamis). While these certainly can cause big problems locally, neither are big enough to cause long-lasting, world-wide, apocalypse-type problems.

Every other geologic process takes an extremely long time, especially earth-scale processes like shifting rotation axes. Just think about it - physics would imply that an unimaginably massive outside force would be required to cause catastrophic changes in such things.

Heck, we still have dinasaurs in Colorado

[Anonymous Coward]

Owens and Tancredo are still running around here lead by Big Dick Wadhams. Plenty of Dinosaurs.

Isn't ....

[rodney dill]

.... Congress evidence enough of this?

Even more in middle management

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of dinosaurs hiding out in Corporate America's middle management layers. A few make it to upper management or to the executive suites.

Q: What do you call a company with too many dinosaurs in the executive suites?
A: Bankrupt. *cue rim-shot*

Re:Even more in middle management

[pjt33]

"Bankrupt" is a funny way of spelling "a great candidate for a bailout".

Quantum Mechanics...

[Shivinski]

As with most articles lately, it'll probably emerge that quantum mechanics is behind the survival of these select few dinosaurs.

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[Qzukk]

it'll probably emerge that quantum mechanics is behind the survival of these select few dinosaurs.

Quantum Mechanics can't save the dinosaurs. For a job this big, we need String Theory.

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[MadKeithV]

Or global warming.
I mean "human-exarcerbated climate change"

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[MadKeithV]

Troll?? Get a sense of humour, mods, and check the parent posts!

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[Anonymous Coward]

No the dinosaurs are dead become of quantum mechanics.

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[pbhj]

it'll probably emerge that quantum mechanics is behind the survival of these select few dinosaurs.

Quantum Mechanics can't save the dinosaurs. For a job this big, we need String Theory.

Pah, those strings are just coincidences of sub-Planck micro-branes.

Re:Quantum Mechanics...

[Spinalcold]

Big? I think you're a confused, the only thing that could save something as large as the dinosaurs is Relativity. Some just went extinct far after other, relativistically speaking.

I think you meme... err, mean...

[jonaskoelker]

in the time it takes to post this comment another 2 "Cave chicks go Rex riding" websites will have been created.

I think you mean "2 Girls 1 Rex"

Re:I think you meme... err, mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

More likely 1 girl shared between two rex.

Re:I think you meme... err, mean...

[Anonymous Coward]

Or one girl shared between three pterodactyls Not only is this not safe for work, it's not safe for anyone.

This has been documented already...

[Anonymous Coward]

Um... Everyone knows about the dinosaurs that lived in Great Valley. They must've died out when they ran out of tree stars.

Some things are just untouchable by parody...

[jonaskoelker]

Holy shit, batman. I thought you were joking. It turns out it was reality tickling my funny-bone.

I especially "like" the quote "Emphasis on scientific evidence supporting: [...]". They're saying up-front "we're here to give you a skewed and biased impression of how the real world works, independent of whether the real world supports our biases".

I can rephrase their bulleted list, too:

"For 45 years(1), we've been spamming the whole world(3), sullying the name of all major sciences(4) and cheating quality control systems(2) in order to convert you to our preconceived notions(6)."

("(n)" refers to the nth bullet)

Wait a second...

[DrWho520]

If they eventually died out because the K-T event drastically changed the environment or the K-T event reduced a species genetic diversity below the point necessary to sustain its population, did that species really survive the K-T event?

If you live through a bomb blast but die 3 days later because of shrapnel in you liver, did you really survive the bomb blast?

Re:Wait a second...

[immakiku]

No but if you eventually produced children and they eventually produced children before your liver kicked it from shrapnel, then you survived it.

not a troll

[drinkypoo]

I can see that the ageists are trying to quiet me down again. "Troll" does not mean "something with which I disagree". Perhaps if you remembered what it was like to be a kid you'd remember how frustrating it was to get bad information. Maybe if you thought about the fact that children are tiny humans you'd think about the long-term consequences of telling them something that isn't true as if it were fact. I'm not proposing that anyone out there should teach their children the specifics of reproductive biology at the age of four (unless, of course, they are interested) but telling them an outright lie is damaging to their development in basically every way, much like sitting a normal child already capable of interacting with others and making emotive noises down in front of the teletubbies instead of giving them something to grow on. I have a friend whose child is using sign language to communicate at eighteen months and understands words in English and Portuguese. While we know little about the mechanism of memory, we do know that all nervous tissue has some sort of memory and that brain activity begins before birth.

Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Re:not a troll

[VShael]

I wasn't trying to indicate HOW you should teach sex-ed to very young children.
If anything I was making the same point you were trying to make, that lying to them at an early age is a bad idea. (I used the Stork to represent that position in my post.)

The point was to use simple concepts first, then get more complex over time.

I suspect you were flagged as a Troll because you seem to have deliberately missed the point of the post, and snarkily decided that "hugging in a special way" would not be suitable as a first idea for children about where kids come from.

I realise now that in future, all hypothetical examples that I create to illustrate a point, should be accurate, factually based, preferably with all the physics worked out. And of course, meet with your pre-approval.

Re:not a troll

[drinkypoo]

I suspect you were flagged as a Troll because you seem to have deliberately missed the point of the post, and snarkily decided that "hugging in a special way" would not be suitable as a first idea for children about where kids come from.

I suspect that I was modded Troll because someone doesn't understand moderation. "Troll" has only one meaning in this context.

Regardless, it was a stupid example; if you were trying to give an example of giving them valid information instead of telling them a lie, perhaps your suggested replacement shouldn't have been a lie.

I realise now that in future, all hypothetical examples that I create to illustrate a point, should be accurate, factually based, preferably with all the physics worked out. And of course, meet with your pre-approval.

All your examples should make sense or it makes it clear that you are not as smart as you think you are — otherwise, they would have come out sensibly in the first place.

Re:not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

In what way is it a lie? - its a euphemism, but sex is just a really special hug with a couple extra interlocking parts (i.e. other than the interlocking arms that make the hug).

Its putting it in a way that makes sense from their world view (one in which hugging a girl isn't a necessarily a trivial action), with no actual lie involved - quite far removed from "the stork brought him".

I fully agree with your sentiment, lying to children is pointless and damaging - but using analogies and explanatory (and accurate) similes can be required to get the message across in the right context. If you go 100% clinical on them straight away, all you're going to do is make it sound bloody awful and scary.

There is a middle ground between outright lying and 100% factual and clinical facts and descriptions.

Out of interest, how would you suggest explaining death to a 5-7 year old? You gonna tell them the various ways their body can break down and about brain functions ceasing, followed by rigor mortise, a vivid description of decomposition (with pics!) and an explanation of how one day they will just cease to exist anymore? Or you gonna say "its a bit like going to sleep for a very long time - and you won't be able to see them or speak to them again."?

Re:not a troll

[mrrudge]

Shhhh, dude, you're on slashdot, and you obviously have some experience of the 'special hug'. Most people around here think that sex is something you torrent from Sweden.

For what it's worth, I agree entirely with your approach to giving information to children. I had a friend who was told that tampons were for stopping nosebleeds...

Ever Heard of Microsoft?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're still living in the triassic period.

Myth turns out to come from a kernal of reality

[argStyopa]

First the bible, now The Land Before Time!

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0095489/

Re:Myth turns out to come from a kernal of reality

[natebarney]

Myth turns out to come from a kernal of reality

Apparently posted from a Commodore 64 :-)

mmmmmmmmm dinasaaour taste like....

[cheekyboy]

Chicken ..... Finger licking good.

little mice need less food

[cheekyboy]

One giant dinasaoar will feed like 1000s of mice for weeks or months.

Just do the math, a little mice needs less than 10g of food for months to be alive, the stupid blahasouraus needs truck loads weekly to live or get thin and die fast.

'Twas the Rapture

[Cazekiel]

The dinosaurs were obviously devout Christians, with a few strays here and there. That 'small pocket' of dino-heathens died a sad, godless death after The Rapture.

nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not new. It is common knowledge with paleontologist that so called mass-extinsions are spread over a relatively long (geological) time period.

KT Extinction?

[Big_Monkey_Bird]

I'm under the impression the K-T Perry extinction was due to girl dinosaurs kissing. And then liked it

Republicans

[Doc Ruby]

Now we can finally start to guess what species that old fossil Arlen Specter is.

dig deeper, sir

[damn_registrars]

Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction

Abybody who knows CowboyNeal would see this as old news

An argument could be made for at least one other large dinosaur working at slashdot.

Call Don Bluth for another Sequel!

[StCredZero]

My favorite animator. Now he has a scientific explanation for another dinosaur happy ending. (Actually, he already did that one *before* he had the science!)

Damn Time Travelers, & circular time travel lo

[jameskojiro]

Here is the theory,

Scientists in the 1980's Wondered why no Dinosaurs after 65 MYA, so they found the K-T event impact crater and assumed it was the event that killed off all of the Dinosaurs.

So later in 2040's when we invent Time Travel, people of course want to go back and see the dinosaurs, so they all go back to the day before the K-T impact and watch the dinosaurs and they figure, hey since they will be relatively extinct tomorrow then why not shoot them and take a few trophy's back with them, plus they are good eatin'....

So by the next day when the Asteroid impacts the Earth most all of the dinosaurs have been hunted to extinction in one day from all of those time travelers going back to the same day before the Asteroid. A few pockets of Dinosaurs Survived the massive hunt because the time travel machines don't work quite right in some areas of on the earth due to magnetite deposits in certain areas. Those few dinos that survived the day before massive hunt and the Asteroid impact didn't have enough genetic diversity to survive and thus died off a little after 65 MYA.

So we killed off the Dinosaurs to make true the extinction we have always had in our fossil record.

The good news is that besides hunting they took some live Dinosaurs forward to the 2040's and they are being bred to replace chicken which have gone extinct due to the avian flu.

NEE: Non-Extinction Event

[gryf]

There have always been huge holes in the asteroid theory. The vulcanism theory came out at the same time and matches evidence better, it even has correlation. All the asteroid theory has really is correlation: there's a layer of meteorite dust around the time of the dinosaur extinction, ergo a giant meteor killed the dinosaurs.

Unfortunately for the meteor theory, it was found that even such a huge dust cloud would not have killed off much of the eco-system, even taking the web of life into account. The dust from the meteor strike was too course to stay up in the atmosphere for long enough to kill off plant life by blocking sunlight or change the climate

To compensate for this, the theory was adjusted to suggest that the meteor strike set off world wide conflagrations sending up fine ash which would blot out the sun. This is, however a stretch. Combined with the fact that the mass extinction happened hundreds of thousands of years after the Chicxulub impact, the theory seems to be on shaky ground. Even supporters of the meteor theory recognize the problem and are looking for a better candidate impact.

It's been said that the Alverez's had done a better job at selling their theory than on developing it. Their actions in shouting down competing theories set off one of the biggest scientific feuds in modern history.

For a balanced view of the competing theories, check out this site.

paleontologists more skeptical than geologists

[peter303]

I attended some of early debates at scientific conferences between the Alvarezes (father and son discoverer of the meteor data) and the their early detractors. The Alvarezes were a chemist and sedimentary geologists neither familiar with paleontology details. There main detractors at the beginning were paleontologists. Other detractors were volcanologists who thought they had a better alternative theory.

In the intervening decades the meteor extinction theory has risen to the level "predominant working hypothesis", that is the thing scientists test new observations against. Generally many more observations support the meteor hypothesis, but who knows how much of that is pre-directed research. Many things in geology have some degree of uncertainty and a true scientist keeps an open mind and ranking of alternative theories.

What's with all the truncated posts today?

[Reziac]

I notice our Slashdottic Overlords have been messing with the CSS again... maybe related, maybe not. But what's with all the truncated posts?? I tried another browser, same thing.

Extinction of words?? Oh dear.

It always bothers me...

[groslyunderpaid]

...when a sentence is structured as such "If this theory holds up, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age" as if they just arrived in that age yesterday.

They are now the only ones who made it into the next age, until the next theory holds up, at which point another group will have made it into the next age.

As if it is an ongoing present day process.

If this theory holds up, then these dinosaurs will be the only ones that we know of that made it into the next age.

There.

Huh?

[Tubal-Cain]

BOTH Biblical accounts...

???

I presume you mean Noah.

Re:Huh?

[bckrispi]

No. Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 tell different creation stories.

Re:Huh?

[Tubal-Cain]

Seems more supplemental than contradictory.
Odd that Man would come before plants, animals, and celestial bodies... but I see no reason the plants couldn't have been the second thing on Day 3's to-do list.

Compare dinosaurs to the ostrich

[GodfatherofSoul]

I was watching a documentary about recently extinct Australian species, including a large emu-like creature. Looking at an ostrich and imagining it without feathers, you can almost see an animation morphing from the sauropod form. IANAPaleontologist, so I could be FoS as usual.

rexse.cx

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean "2 Girls 1 Rex"

Sounds more promising than "2 Rexes, 1 Cup" anyway...

Still have it wrong......

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone still gets it wrong.

The K-T boundary did not kill the dinos.

All finds are BELOW the K-T..... NOT IN or ABOVE !

They died from something else before the big rock slammed into the earth.

= For any complex problem, there is always a quick and simple answer that is absolutely wrong. -- said by someone.

FUD!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense! I live in Colorado and I haven't seen any dinosaurs at my backyard dinosaur feeder in YEARS.

They are extinct!

1 million not half-million

[Anonymous Coward]

Cool if true, but the actual article suggests they may have survived in this small area for up to a million years, not a half-million as the Examiner and Slashdot state.

Kristina from Science News

[AMESN]

Had Meg Marquardt actually done some real research on the way paleontologists understand extinction events, she could have noted that the idea of a pocket of survivors is not a big deal and in no way completely overthrows the well-established evidence that the extinction was indeed massive.