Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Dinos in the news

Two articles have been printed together, which raise some interesting questions. One states that the Deccan Traps may have been the smoking gun that killed the dinosaurs, and another says that a flood of efficient grazing mammals came from India.

It's all a matter of timing. India could evolve mammals because it was totally isolated throughout the Jurassic, and only 'docked' about 10 million years ago. At that time, the mammals could have flooded the earth, and taken over.

Then there's the massive volcanism of the Deccan Traps, about 65 million years ago, which is the latest hoopla about killing off the dinosaurs. What about those mammals people? They were stranded on the Indian ship! If you are going to kill all the dinosaurs in the world from India, I wouldn't give anybody nearby, much chance to live.

Personally, I think this is all crap anyway. Dinosaurs were a creature of plate tectonics. They loved it when all the continents smashed together, and had a big oceanic crust bake-off. This gave them tons of warmth, tons of carbon dioxide and oxygen, and lots of water vapour in the atmosphere. When the continents started their slide apart, the party was over. If, by chance, there was some final blow, it was irrelevant, since the dinos would not like today's cold, thin, dry air.

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