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New Theory Suggests Dinosaurs Were Already Dying When Asteroid Hit (phys.org)
The new "biotic revenge hypothesis" suggests that dinosaurs were killed off by toxic plants. (And an inability to recognize the taste of a toxic plant.) the gmr summarizes a new paper reported at Phys.org:
The dinosaur population had been drastically decreasing before the asteroid impact, [and] the appearance of the first flowering plants -- angiosperms -- in the fossil record coincides with the gradual disappearance of the dinosaurs... The scientists concluded that though the asteroid played a role in the extinction of dinosaurs, the "plants had already placed severe strain on the species."
Crocodiles (believed to be descended from dinosaurs) also can't recognize the taste of toxic plants -- the researchers tested 10 different species. And they point out that not only did dinosaurs start to disappear before the asteroid impact -- they continued to "gradually disappear for millions of years afterward."
Crocodiles (believed to be descended from dinosaurs) also can't recognize the taste of toxic plants -- the researchers tested 10 different species. And they point out that not only did dinosaurs start to disappear before the asteroid impact -- they continued to "gradually disappear for millions of years afterward."
aren't we?
A quick quote from Wikipedia,
As such, birds were the only dinosaur lineage to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.
Crocodiles are not decedents of dinosaurs - they are reptiles. If this paper can not even see this then I can not put much weight into their theory.
I wonder if birds can taste the toxins then, since they're descended from dinosaurs and survived, though apparently at their worst they were down to a fairly small population on a remote island somewhere. (Can't remember where I read that...)
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Dinosaurs are not extinct. Over the past few decades, research showed that birds are closely related to dinosaurs. They are directly descended from theropods and are now classified as dinosaurs. Scientists now classify birds as feathered dinosaurs and, as a result, that means dinosaurs never went extinct. It's certainly reasonable that the populations of many dinosaurs were already declining prior to the asteroid impact, and it's plausible that toxic plants may have contributed to this. It is somewhat remarkable to me that dinosaurs would not have adapted and evolved to recognize and avoid toxic plants. Perhaps that would have happened were it not for the asteroid impact, and avian ancestors were better suited to the strains put on dinosaur populations. Regardless, it's incorrect to say that dinosaurs are extinct. Because birds are classified as dinosaurs, they most certainly are not extinct.
"Crocodiles (believed to be descended from dinosaurs) also can't recognize the taste of toxic plants..."
Are you fucking kidding me!!!???
They are strict carnivores! Why in hell they would give a damn about a plant, toxic or otherwise!?
Ooooh! but they tested (so they say) about crocodillian ability to discern toxic food (not only plants)... Crocodillians come from a lineage about 200M year old -they haven't find ANY damn thing that makes them real sick so, why they should bother!?
Stuff that matter, they say...
I'll wait for experimental conformation of this theory's predictions.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
The article doesn't claim that the decline of dinosaurs is a new theory. The fossil record clearly shows that dinosaurs were already on the decline before and died out well after Chicxulub. The asteroid contributed, but it was only one of several reasons for their extinction.
WOW! Someone made up more stupid RANDOM TRASH
Indeed. The paper is published by a psychologist, who is trying to psychoanalyse dinosaurs that lived 70 million years ago, when there is little evidence that psychoanalysis even works on living humans.
TFA contains some serious scientific illiteracy:
1. Dinosaurs are not "a species".
2. Crocodiles did not "descend from dinosaurs"
3. Plants would have no reason to evolve tasteless toxins, and there is no evidence whatsoever that they did.
Also, dinosaurs didn't go extinct. Some species died out, but other species survived. I have four small dinosaurs in my backyard, and they are very much alive. I keep them in my chicken coop, and their eggs are delicious. Much better than store-bought dinosaur eggs.
All the birds we see today are the descendants of the dinosaurs.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
... then I can not put much weight into their theory.
Ahhh, c'mon. The Dinos are all dead, SOMETHING killed them. Asteroids, meteors, tar magnets, poisonous plants, global warming, SOMETHING. It's a heavy subject. So what if they got a few supporting things wrong? It's almost like you doubt their conclusions or something. If it feels right, it IS right -- right?
After all, everyone knows THIS is what actually happened.,
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
This may (although it doesn't, really) explain the decline of dinosaurs, but it says nothing about why thousands of other species (including all the ammonites) went extinct at the same time.
And the theory that dinosaurs were already dying off before the K/Pg boundary is hardly new. Part of that is an artifact of how fossils are formed and found. A species could have lasted several million years after its latest-known fossil, it just didn't happen to leave any fossils that have yet been found. (Conversely, the last surviving member of a species could have been fossilized. Unlikely though, except in the case of a mass extinction event.)
-- Alastair
And they point out that not only did dinosaurs start to disappear before the asteroid impact -- they continued to "gradually disappear for millions of years afterward."
If dinosaurs survived for millions of years after the asteroid impact, then very clearly the impact did not kill them. The asteroid didn't kill the dinosaurs any more than the Black Death killed humanity. No, Trump will kill humanity. Trump will kill us dead. Trump!
There's zero evidence that dinosaurs existed after the asteroid. The article referred to by Slashdot, the Biotic Revenge Hypotheses has this citation for their "continued to survive" claim:
Sakamoto, M., Benton, M.J., and C. Venditti. 2016. Dinosaurs in decline tens of millions of years before their final extinction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(18):5036–5040
But the Sakamoto article says this about that: "The fossil record shows that dinosaurs existed to the K-Pg boundary but did not survive into the Cenozoic"
So, bzzzzt wrong answer.
see here. Haven't you ever seen a dog eat grass?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Anyone know if florists will deliver to Congress?
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
First the Earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil. And then the Arabs came and they bought Mercedes Benzes. [McCroskey walks off] And Prince Charles started wearing all of Lady Di's clothes. I couldn't believe it- [Jacobs turns and starts to walk away, continuing to speak, trailing off as he gets further from the camera] he took her best summer dress and he put it on and went to town...
I'm guessing that the problem here is something called "the gmr." That's the first link in the Slashdot article. It looks to be a badly garbled summary of the paper which is accessible as a pdf from the second link.
I'm not going to waste time deconstructing the gmr material. It's kind of a shambles.
What the paper actually says if one tracks it down is that dinosaurs MAY have been in decline at the end of the Cretaceous -- true, but hardly proven. The sampling is so non-random that it's hard to tell. The paper itself seems to argue that caimans (a variety of crocodilian) don't reject a foodstuff just because it made them sick the last time they ate it. Birds OTOH, do. They then hypothesize that the dinosaurs might have been more like caimans than birds and that they poisoned themselves because, unlike, birds, they couldn't/didn''t avoid plants that made them sick.
That's not stupid, but if you ask me, it's rather a lot of conjecture based on a pretty limited factual foundation.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Except there's this one. I had forgotten about it due to the thought that a single bone is more likely to be a re-buried bone, and also because I forget a lot of stuff lately. Decide for yourself.
http://palaeo-electronica.org/...
https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/201...
Where did he say otherwise? Perhaps you're confusing putting something in quotes with adding [sic] after it, in which case you're in no position to judge anyone's literacy.
P.S. They're not "a species". But if you can provide evidence of an Alllosaurus mating with a Diplodocus you can send me a postcard from Stockholm and I'll admit you're right.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"There's zero evidence that dinosaurs existed after the asteroid"
Not zero. There's rather a lot of dinosaur material in early Paleocene strata in North America. The issue is whether it is (all) reworked from underlying cretaceous strata. In particular, a lot a folks think the saurian remains in the Ojo Alamo Formation in New Mexico are Paleocene . However, to my knowledge, no one has yet found an articulated Paleocene dinosaur skeleton. If articulated material is ever found, that'll probably settle the argument.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Well, that's one of the most entertainingly batshit ideas I've heard this week. Thanks!
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Well what good would that do? If you taste nasty it chews a few leaves and then fucks off leaving you mostly intact. If you taste OK but are secretly poisonous it dies after it's already eaten you.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Paradoxes are a human invention. Nature's never heard of 'em.
Wait did you read the same thing I did? We're talking about the phys.org summary of the paper right? https://m.phys.org/news/2018-0... ...
It says "the species" not "a species", which could explain some of this confusion about singular or plural. "The species" can easily be plural.
Oops, meant to post one level up.
Wait did you read the same thing I did? We're talking about the phys.org summary of the paper right? https://m.phys.org/news/2018-0... ...
It says "the species" not "a species", which could explain some of this confusion about singular or plural. "The species" can easily be plural.
A global alteration of gravity? Like grue and bleen, the law of gravity itself changed? And that seems less likely than an meteor impact?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Huh? A "species" is different from "a species". If you put the whole thing in quotes it looks like you're quoting the article, and the article actually didn't say "a species". It says "the species".
You Jesus freaks make up all sorts of crap to fit your absurd worldview. Only 2018 years?!!?!? We know for a fact the world is 6000+ years old, and we have the tablets to prove it.
Mod parent up!
This is a case where it's difficult to be specific, because the evidence is scant. If you're only getting one good fossil per thousand years, detecting a decline is dubious. But it does seem that some species of dinosaur were already in decline. And others weren't. A few appear to have been flourishing.
OTOH, accepted theory as of a few years ago is that birds are not descended from dinosaurs, they descend from a line that branched off before the dinosaurs separated from the rest of the reptiles. The ornithiscian dinosaurs had similar hips, but were not ancestral to birds. Neither were birds ancestral to the ornithiscians. They both descend from an earlier ancestor.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I missed something when reading that ... how would an electrical discharge alter the Earth's gravity?
First time I've heard anybody claim crocodiles are dinosaurs.
Because they are not. Dinosaurs and crocodiles are both archosaurs. But to claim one group is descended from the other is incorrect in much the same way as I am not descended from my brother.
Crocodiles are also not lizards. Lizards split with archosaurs before dinosaurs and crocodiles split. So crocodiles are not lizards in the same way as I am not descended from my cousin.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
No, it's just that all the plants with tasteless poison got eaten leaving the ones with bad tasting poison behind to reproduce.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Why is Slashdot still letting you mod up your posts with sock puppets?
You try to turn every slightly-related story into your own crazy EU blog, and it's really fucking annoying.
Why did winged dinosaurs the size of small airplanes exist? They certainly couldn't fly in our current gravity.
Random mutations happen, some stick around, and a new equilibrium is established.
Toxins require energy to produce, and often are stressful for the plant, since they are ... toxic. So the genes for them aren't going to "stick around" unless they provide some countervailing benefit. If they are tasteless, they will not prevent consumption by herbivores, and will have no adaptive benefit.
It is possible that the toxin was directed at a different predator, such as insects, and just killed the dinosaurs as collateral damage. But that is just conjecture. There is no evidence that such toxins existed.
If they are tasteless, they will not prevent consumption by herbivores, and will have no adaptive benefit.
Their survival demonstrates their fittest-ness - whether it's apparent to you or not.
It is possible that the toxin was directed at a different predator,
This is a common mistake. There is no intelligence directing evolution, it's all random.
Why not? Airplanes can. Even really big airplanes.
Oh, and pterosaurs weren't dinosaurs.
-- Alastair
The very first answer in the first link you posted answers the question:
<quote>Dinosaurs do not violate the square cube law.
Take the known strengths of bone and muscle, assume an animal shaped like the largest dinosaurs, apply the square cube law, and you get the maximum possible size and mass for an animal of that shape.
And, wait for it...
It turns out that maximum possible size and mass is just a tiny bit BIGGER than the biggest known dinosaurs!</quote>
Dinosaurs are a different shape to mammals.
They are probably dying because of all the carbon they were producing through their industrialization, and due to dwindling resources, ended up having a nuclear war and wiped themselves out.
There is no intelligence directing evolution
Nobody said there was. Something doesn't have be intelligent to having a reason for happening. If you drop a rock, it will fall. Reason: gravity. That doesn't mean rocks are smart. Polar bears evolved thick fur. Reason: The arctic is cold. That doesn't mean bears are smart either.
it's all random.
Nonsense. Mutations are random. Evolution (the survival of those mutations) is not.
You seem to have run into some confusion.
It is true that birds are not descended from ornithischian dinosaurs. But birds are descended from dinosaurs. The birds are descendants of the theropods, traditionally classed as one of the major divisions of saurischians.
(There is a recent suggestion that a reclassification is necessary, that most theropods are actually closer-related to the ornithischians than the rest of the saurischians. But either way, birds are descended from theropod dinosaurs while not being descended from the ornithischians.)
Just bought a bag of squirrel prove dinosaur food. It is infused with cayenne that, while not actually poisonous to squirrels, sure discourages them from eating it. The dinosaurs in my yard are lacking in a sense (taste?) that gets triggered by cayenne and happily eat it. If cayenne was a deadly poison, mammals would avoid it and the dinosaurs would die.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Given that the vast majority of dinosaurs were already extinct by that period, I'd say there's a good chance the effects of that asteroid are somewhat over-stated.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
How's life in the hypocrite lane?
I'm not asking about that. I'm asking how an electric discharge changes gravity.
My regards to Childeric.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Now you're getting somewhere.
The herbivore won't be back to eat the plants siblings, who share a lot of the same genes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
They might want to rename the divisions too, as birds not being descended from the bird-hipped group looks somewhat silly now.
If cayenne was a deadly poison, mammals would avoid it and the dinosaurs would die.
If cayenne was poisonous, there would be intense pressure on dinosaurs/birds to evolve the ability to avoid it, either through taste or otherwise.
But cayenne is not poisonous, and it evolved to taste bad to mammals because birds (flying dinosaurs) are better at distributing seeds.
Back then there were no tablets. Everyone used mainframes, or nothing at all.
I don't trust atoms -- they make up stuff.
see here. Haven't you ever seen a dog eat grass?
Dogs have evolved to be omnivores.
This includes 1.5 tonne monstrosities like Yutyrannus Huali, (related to Tyranosaurous Rex) https://news.nationalgeographi...
Discoveries and detailed analysis of recent dinosaur fossils indicate that they were covered with feathers long before flight evolved. And they are now believed to have been warm-blooded. this is confirmed by CT scans of well-preserved fossils (e.g. 600 pound herbivore) showing a 4-chambered heart with *ONE* aorta http://contenidopatrocinado.cn... This is a physiological sign of a warm blooded animal.
So dinosaurs had feathers and were warm blooded. Birds have feathers and are warm blooded. Birds are one group of dinosaurs that survived the asteroid. This was probably due to small size and being able to scavenge scarce food right after the impact.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
The Thunderbolts site does not claim that an electric discharge changed gravity. If you were to read through their materials, you'd see that the claim that David Talbott is making -- for which there is not absolute consensus amongst adherents to electrical cosmology -- is that the Earth was for a limited time part of a Herbig-Haro formation -- which is an unstable, yet astronomically observed, configuration for astronomical bodies in space where the bodies are strung out in a line, and exist in much closer proximity to one another. This alternative configuration would be part of what caused this lowered state for gravity, and the electric discharge was only related to the unstable configuration's breakup.
There are other comparative mythologists -- like Rens van der Sluijs -- who do believe that there is very important astronomical and planetary sciences history within the earliest mythological archetypes, but who have ended up at a more "uniformitarian" set of conclusions. Where there exists consensus is on the fact that the earliest stories told by mankind are infused with far more astronomical content than modern scientists are willing to recognize, and also that it is not possible to interpret the earliest mythological archetypes without using the tools of laboratory plasma physics.
It's important to stress the peculiar nature of our current solar system. We've seen enough exoplanetary systems by now to understand that our solar system could be remarkably unique -- which probably means that it is a completely awful template to use for constructing a hypothesis for how planets form. So, although people have and do make fun of David Talbott for proposing an exotic former state for our solar system, it would seem that our current solar system may not really be a "typical" solar system at all. The truth of the matter -- only occasionally acknowledged by the science journalists -- is that our planetary sciences theories are in a state of disarray at this point for the very reason that theorists have trouble assembling the systems that we can now clearly see without proposing planetary migrations.
What tends to happen with hypotheses is that when they begin, they start as very simple ideas. The nebular hypothesis was straightforward and seemed to work very well for many years. As we've observed a lot of different systems, that old idea is not faring so well. But, culturally, since we are all taught it, we tend to cling to it. It's all that most people know, so people who propose alternatives are perceived as sort of wacky. But, the situation in the planetary sciences is quite dire at this point: Even the scientists are at this point in time being forced to consider some pretty wacky ideas.
Airplanes are not bound by Galileo's square-cube law.
What I notice about the Quora claim is that the person did not include their algebra. He is making a claim about algebra, but fails to go through the math.
By contrast, others have indeed gone through the math, like here in the 2nd and 3rd bubbles and the answer of ~21,000 lbs would seem to be very far shy of the largest dinosaur weights. It seems very unlikely that fiddling with bone and muscle densities (etc) is going to make up the difference to the 176,000 pounds that the sauropod is claimed to have weighed.
The weight of the largest land-walking dinosaurs is a paradox.
The largest flying creatures from these times are also a paradox. 8 meters was thought to be the theoretical wingspan limit for any airborne creature -- at least until Quetzalcoatlus specimens were found.
What we see in these scientific disciplines are theorists fiddling with the numbers and behaviors in order to satisfy the paradox that they cannot exist in our current gravity. For instance, it has been claimed that the Pteranodon did not actually fly -- but rather could only glide. Yet, in some cases, the remains of these creatures are found with fish fossils and the bird had a throat pouch like a pelican. So, the creature goes down to scoop up some fish, and then what? How does it get back up to its nest? It doesn't seem that people think much about these problems these days.
Regardless, the largest flying creatures were a paradox.
Then, there are the problematic necks of the largest-necked creatures. Giraffes require an extraordinary blood pressure to get blood to their necks 20 feet up. But, the sauropod had a neck of about 50-60 feet in length! This raises issues related to not just blood pressure, but also torque.
Do the math on this blood pressure and torque, and the largest-necked creatures were a paradox.
Theorists will typically try to address just one of these problems at a time (by suggesting that the sauropod did not elevate its neck, reducing bone density or proposing that the air must have been thicker, for example), but it would seem that the only way to resolve all three problems at once is to alter gravity, no?
Re: "You try to turn every slightly-related story into your own crazy EU blog, and it's really fucking annoying."
The real problem is that people have decided that they are dead-set against the EU without actually learning what it is and why other people do believe it. Most of what people think they know about the topic here comes from error-filled, unreviewed critiques by debunkers.
Once upon a time, there was all the time in the world.
The human race rested comfortably for millennia in warm nests of tales that the world had been created especially for us, and later science stepped in to supplant this quaint notion with immeasurable expanses of geologic time in which a rich compost of academic theory might take root and prosper. Everything that had come before us had made way for us, dinosaurs died so that we might live. Children calmed their nightmares with this simple idea after they had been overcome with excitement and terror at the sight of massive skeletons. They could rest easily from some vague sense that nature takes turns ... and this is our turn.
But we now know exactly what the dinosaurs had been doing all those millions of years, practically speaking. Eating and roaring and fucking yes, but also... just biding their time until an asteroid came along to kill them all, not doing enough to prevent it.
That is true for us also up to now. The first stage to mitigate an existential threat is conscious awareness of the threat, and dinosaurs had not developed that far.
We reached that point millennia ago and should have known better, as chance witness of meteors spun into great tales of heavenly vengeance. No doubt if I as a modern thinker appeared in their midst claiming these are just rocks and ice in the sky and we must get cracking to send our own things into the heavens to spot them early and destroy them before they destroy us, I'd be sacrificed to appease to the gods they had conjured. Because people would rather spend a morning in church to be granted snake-oil absolution and get on with their lives, than launch a space program.
But we know now what the human race has been doing for millennia, practically speaking. Eating and warring and building empires and exploring and fucking yes, but also... just biding our time until an asteroid comes along to kill us all, not doing enough to prevent it.
Then the Darwinian stuffed shirts arose with the Industrial Revolution to insult Negroes and Neanderthals, and Jules Verne went ballistic on space travel and other ideas. We visited the Moon before we could, extended imaginary railroads into the sky, explored the oceans in thought before we could in practice, fancied canals on Mars and played with the idea that our conquest of Earth was complete. But tucked away in a steamer-trunk were those Old Time Religion apocalyptic visions of catastrophe. The finest minds of the era failed to combine mass and kinetic energy and some parlor-game estimate of celestial composition into a sense of urgency. For the first time -- if we had focused our efforts to meet some heavenly threat -- we might have gotten a 100 year jump-start. But by now there was this odd popular notion that meteors are a 'known phenomenon' with some mysterious upper bound as to size. Celestial entertainment.
All through the Industrial Revolution, practically speaking, more eating and warring and harnessing the electron and fucking and yes ... biding more time until an asteroid comes along to kill us all, not doing enough to prevent it.
Then the 20th Century exploded in our faces. We conquered mass and energy, even dinner napkins could hold simple equations to unleash devastation formerly reserved for gods. Optics and electrons revealed distant wonders. The skies shown with greater resolution than ever before and the clockwork solar system of Copernicus gave way to a gritty mishmash of colliding and bouncing objects on every scale that would confound later computer models. It was easy to see that flecks and small pieces of this model are inevitably bound to intersect Earth, some massive, but there was too much distraction from fascinating wars and suburbia to bother. Meteors were still small... hadn't they always been? And now we could make big booms and dwelled with pride, boorishly tossing off the 'Hiroshima' as a unit of m
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Dinosaurs were changing with their environments for many millions of years and suddenly they all got poisoned? I don't buy it. I suggest it has more to do with the rise of mammals. Perhaps mammals were destroying their ground-based nests, eating their eggs. It would give impetus to a move into the trees. Those who moved survived to this day as birds. Those who didn't became extinct. Further, notice where many birds go to have land-based nests. These locations are usually far and desolate to protect against predators -- mammals.
E Proelio Veritas.
Indeed. Crocodilians are the closest living relatives to dinosaurs that are not themselves dinosaurs (the closest living relatives are, of course, the avian dinosaurs that are still around - a particularly cute variety of which is is currently trying to preen my fingers while I type ;) )
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
You sure about that? When I studied it (well, informally) birds were said to have branched off before the dinosaurs were a separate group. Sort of like the Pterosaurs, which also branched off before the dinosaurs had separated.
OTOH, all these recent fossils with feathers may have caused people to reorganize things.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They all just got disinterested in sex
Would you fuck a dinosaur?
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
Childeric says hello, and also he says you owe him $48.15 because you snuck out before the bar tab was closed.
I say kudos to you. I never got anything over on him.
Um OK...
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Also, it would seem to better explain what we actually observed with the extinction event being discussed than the hypothesis put forward by the submitted article: All of the creatures far beyond a particular weight of around 20,000 lbs completely disappeared, and it would seem that of the creatures that did survive, they became considerably smaller. That's more-or-less precisely what one would expect if gravity was to suddenly change. The cutoff would seem to almost perfectly correspond to the square-cube ratio of a human powerlifter, and there would seem to not be any explanation for how former dinosaurs could (1) weigh so much; (2) fly at such large weights; and (3) have such long necks.
It's a fascinating argument. I would love it if somebody would find a hole in this logic. I completely realize that it's not the type of evidence that people are generally looking for when it comes to evaluating theories for gravity or cosmology, but it honestly seems air-tight to me. We seem to have a completely authentic paradox here.
First time I've heard anybody claim crocodiles are dinosaurs.
Because they are not. Dinosaurs and crocodiles are both archosaurs. But to claim one group is descended from the other is incorrect in much the same way as I am not descended from my brother.
Crocodiles are also not lizards. Lizards split with archosaurs before dinosaurs and crocodiles split. So crocodiles are not lizards in the same way as I am not descended from my cousin.
Maybe YOU'RE not descended from your brother and your cousin, but nothing in biology precludes you being descended from your brother and your cousin. (It would have to be a half-brother though.)
There's plenty of evidence that they existed after Chicxulub: notably the fact that they still exist today. I see them flying around every day.
Did not know that? Also how do they test to see if the crocs can recognize the taste of toxic flowering plants? Force feed them and see if they spit them out?
Just a weird thing to read ...
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It doesn't, but your comment proves that you don't.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I did think of that. Then it occurred to me that herbivores have siblings too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So what's the purpose of it? To deter something else? Or could it just be a coincidence? They do happen, and usually in pairs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Perhaps he changed it because the definite article didn't make sense in context.
Like "he's a man" vs "he's the man".
In either case, dinosaurs aren't one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
For once, Alabama law agrees with science.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
No it doesn't. It just demonstrates the absence of total crappiness. You don't have to be best to be good enough.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"Though the asteroid certainly played a factor, the psychological deficit which rendered dinosaurs incapable of learning to refrain from eating certain plants had already placed severe strain on the speciesâ. Species is plural. Makes sense as is.
Like Hungarian voters, you mean?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
True, evolution is complex when it comes to the groups survival with humans being one example where sibling survival seems to be one of the driving forces behind our evolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Also, it would seem to better explain what we actually observed with the extinction event being discussed than the hypothesis put forward by the submitted article: All of the creatures far beyond a particular weight of around 20,000 lbs completely disappeared, and it would seem that of the creatures that did survive, they became considerably smaller. That's more-or-less precisely what one would expect if gravity was to suddenly change.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. We know about gravity from physics, and the laws of gravitation have been measured to the finest accuracy of measurements we can make. Not only that but we can literally see back in time billions of years because light is slow compared to the size of the universe.
You are weighing up the most accurate and thoroughly verified physics agains a hypothesis for which there are plenty of other, more plausible alternatives.
That's more-or-less precisely what one would expect if gravity was to suddenly change.
Sauropods couldn't chew, which likely speaks to a very inefficient digestion system. Coupled with the lack of angiosperms which means here were none of the modern soft, fast growng, easily digestible plants means they likely needed vast bulk to be effective herbivoes.
Being that big comes with huge disadvantages, such as a very long time until sexual maturity and an anatomy designed to supprot large sizes is not very survivable at small ones (the eggs were a mere 5 litres or so). Also, the advanced forms of thermoregulation, i.e. fur, feathers and scales were not there for most of them and sheer bulk allows the maintainance of a reasonable body temperature without excessive energy expenditure because of the square cube law. The feathered dinosaurs at the time were much smaller as far as we know.
Contrast to now: a modern ruminant or even hing gut fermenter with fur and sweat glands (think cow or horse) can maintian a very high metabolic rate for and extended period in a wide variety of conditions. They eat primarily realtively easily digestible grasses and soft leaves, not these (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycad) incredibly tough things. Now, the advantages of vast size are very much outweighted by the disadvantages.
Many of those arguments apply to other dinosaurs as well. It's hard to know precisely how dinosaur digestion worked, but based on the morphology we know, the basal digestion systems were very primitive.
As for how the very big flying ones flew... I have personally flown a K21 (wingspan of 17m and a gross weight of around half a ton) for many hours at a time without any engine at all.
The think that distinguished pterasaurs from birds is the arrangement of the wings means they can use the flight muscles to jump as well.
and there would seem to not be any explanation for how former dinosaurs could (1) weigh so much; (2) fly at such large weights; and (3) have such long necks.
None of those things are outside the realms of possibility.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
It could equally be interpreted the other way. At best, it's sloppy writing.
s/the species/them/ and it's unambiguous.
P.S. another gem (p48) "gastro-intestinal track". No doubt you'll find some convoluted way to justify that too.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I'm not justifying anything. Just saying, someone else already made sense of this, and your trolling didn't make any sense because you didn't read TFS,TFA or the post above you properly.It dragged out a bit because you continued to paraphrase without reading.
It claims we can conclude that dinosaurs didn't develop an aversion to foods that make them sick based on the fact that caimans (which have a common ancestor) don't.
Can we therefore conclude that pterosaurs didn't fly based on the fact that caimans don't?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Yes, he's sure about that, the birds being dinosaurs theory/consensus is relatively new. I was taught the same thing as you were... about 30-40 years ago, back when few even thought dinosaurs had feathers. The theory birds were descendants of theropods, while not new, has grown stronger since then to the point it's pretty much now the scientific consensus.
The current Wikipedia page on the subject does a reasonable job of describing the current situation, and is well cited (you don't have to rely upon the editors biases!) if you want to take a look.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.