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Dinosaurs died from sudden temperature drop 'not comet strike', scientists claim

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Proud Mary

Sat Apr 24 2010, 08:32PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Dinosaurs died from sudden temperature drop 'not comet strike', scientists claim

By Andrew Hough
Telegraph
24 April 2010

British researchers claim that a sudden plummeting in the sea temperature of 16F (9C) more than 137 million years ago was the first step towards their eventual road to extinction.

While studying fossils and minerals from Arctic Svalbard, Norway, they concluded the sudden change in the Atlantic Gulf Stream during the Cretaceous period would almost certainly have wiped out the ''abundance'' of the world's dinosaurs.

Some experts believe the creatures were wiped out by one cataclysmic event 65 million years ago â€“ such as a meteor hitting the planet.

But the new research suggests they were wiped out by a series of environmental changes, starting with a drop in sea temperatures.

Gregory Price, from Plymouth University, who led the study, said his team's research showed the drop in temperature happened when the Earth was in a ''greenhouse'' climate, which was very similar to now.

He found the drop in temperatures was so severe that numerous species of dinosaur previously living in warm, shallow seas, land and swamps would have died out.

''We believe dinosaurs were most likely to be cold-blooded creatures and would have needed the warmth to keep them alive,â€ he said.

â€œIf they were unable to migrate south they could have been wiped out. Climate change is now very much on the agenda in trying to determine how the dinosaurs became extinct.

â€œWe now believe that they died out gradually and it is very possible that this could have been caused by a series of climatic changes.''

The drop in temperature is thought to have occurred because high levels of CO2 were in the atmosphere which caused global temperatures to rise and polar ice to melt â€“ a phenomenon currently predicted for Earth.

MinorityCarrier

Sun Apr 25 2010, 03:19AM

Registered Member #2123 Joined: Sat May 16 2009, 03:10AM
Location: Bend, Oregon
Posts: 312

What these researchers are proposing is conjecture based upon interpretation of fossil populations. This decline theory has been proposed before.

The dinosaurs persisted 180 million years through all kinds continental rearrangements and volcanism that was sure to change oceanic currents and induce significant climate changes. However the North American fossil record is quite abundant in the cretaceous period for millions of years after the researcher's proposed era of temperature drop and proposed population decline. Animals adapt, there were polar dinosaurs adapted to cold temperatures. I think it took a much bigger hammer blow or two (flood basalts, impact of a 10km meteor) to wipe out all animals larger than a crocodile in the geological blink of an eye as indicated by the thin Iridium layer that terminates the dinosaur fossil record.

They're going have a interesting time at whatever symposium they present their data.

Proud Mary

Sun Apr 25 2010, 10:19AM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

Single key solutions to scientific problems have always appealed to journalistic demand for a clear-cut story.

But a multi-factorial saurian decline could embrace a Cretaceous-Tertiary impact, iridium spikes and Stishovite microspherules at the Permian -Triassic boundary, climate change driven by endemic volcanism, and so on.

Have any serious commentators ever proposed that the poor reptiles all dropped down dead in a Biblical-style apocalyptic event? More likely their kind could not adapt at the rate at which their environment was changing - that they became extinct through failure of adaption, as much as Noah's refusal to let them aboard the Ark!

HV Enthusiast

Sun Apr 25 2010, 01:13PM

Registered Member #15 Joined: Thu Feb 02 2006, 01:11PM
Location:
Posts: 3068

Stop spreading this ridiculous information.

We all know that the dinosaurs died during Noah's flood. . .

MinorityCarrier

Sun Apr 25 2010, 04:53PM

Registered Member #2123 Joined: Sat May 16 2009, 03:10AM
Location: Bend, Oregon
Posts: 312

Fossils were created by Satan to confuse the Righteous. True Believers know dinosaurs never existed.

But seriously, how can they say the Chicxulub meteor/comet strike "didn't" cause the extinction? That something that happened some 70 million years prior to the extinction is what caused the extinction. Have fun with that argument.

BTW, there were major flood basalt eruptions and super caldera eruptions, (Mahogany Mountain, Bruneau/Jarbridge) some 12 million years ago in the area near where I live now, and there is not much evidence that even any significant continental extinctions took place, the horse evolved anyway, the megafauna survived (until 12,000 years ago anyway, damn that Noah's Flood).

Proud Mary

Sun Apr 25 2010, 06:37PM

Registered Member #543 Joined: Tue Feb 20 2007, 04:26PM
Location: UK
Posts: 4992

I don't know enough about geology and dinosaurs to have formed an opinion, though I like to keep up with the latest insights and explanations so far as I am able.

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