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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."
So does that mean skimpily clad cavewomen really *did* ride around on dinosaurs? mmmm...
Cemil.
only I call them "chickens".
They're called "birds".... Duh! ;-)
They are still with us, working for some IT departments. Have you never seen an IEsixosaurus?
Smivs on the intertubes!
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".
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
"some dinosaurs survived the extinction event(s)"
If some dinosaurs hadn't survived it/them, we wouldn't have birds.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
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.
Everyone who reads Dilbert already knows this. They're hiding behind the couch.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
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.
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
"Tyranno-saur-us, but did anyone ... [puts on shades] ... see them?"
[The Who] Bwaaaaaaaaoooo ba ba! (etc)
Some Large Dinosaurs Survived the K-T Extinction
Abybody who knows CowboyNeal would see this as old news
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.
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"
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.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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)
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.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...