Sunday, April 26, 2009

Snow Dinosaurs

...Now it turns out they lived North of the Arctic Circle. Great, even the North Slope wouldn't be refuge if the great Thunder Lizard returns!

Er, I'm just sayin'. Oh, would you lookit the time?
Posted by at
Labels: , ,

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Couple of issues.

First off the continents move, so figure an inch per year (give or take) so what is polar now is not likely to have been polar 65MM years ago. While I did not look up my paleo-climatelogy for Russia, I vaguely remember that they were a lot more temperate back then. Maybe 45 to 50 north give or take.

Second, as was pointed out by one of the other Geo's on the comments section, back then the world was hot. Dang hot. Not like now so it is likely that even at 45 to 50 north it would have been pretty warm for a reptile.

The problem is most non-geo's can't deal with the function of time. We (geologist) are used to dealing with the fact that what is happening today has little bearing on what happened before in terms of topography.

As they teach you in basic geo courses first year. "Seas come in, seas go out, mountains go up, and the crust moves about"

Final thought. As I remember you all are up in Indiana give or take. Just remember, if it were not for global warming, you all would be at the toe of a glacier or buried under a mile of ice. Be happy for a bit of warmth because ice ages are really cold....

April 26, 2009 at 11:55 AM
Neutrino Cannon said...

Tyrannosaurs had feathers, so coping with colder temperatures would be a relatively simple task of evolving denser insulation, reducing total surface area, and maybe enlarging the fat deposits. Large tyrannosaurs hit sexual maturity at around 18 years old, so how long will the humans have in their frigid refuge before the great beasts are able to tromp through the snow with impunity and make hors dourves of them all?

April 26, 2009 at 1:21 PM
Roberta X said...

I'm just danged happy for Global Warming; if I remember correctly, we appear to have dodged the Ice Age bullet a couple of times in post-Roman history, the first time just barely.

The article suggests conditions were indeed warmer, but not quite lizardly-warm; more like "warm enough for birds." Warm-blooded critters. That lay eggs. And have feathers. H'mmmmm. What a co-inky-dink!

April 26, 2009 at 1:47 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)