Posted on 03/22/2006 1:55:20 PM PST by mathprof
DINOSAURS were most likely killed off because they never got a good night's sleep, scientists have claimed.
Giant meteorites from outer space, fire storms, tidal waves and an ice age have all been suggested by experts to explain the demise of T-Rex and other giant dinosaurs.
However, the latest theory to explain their extinction claims they did not survive because their reptilian sleeping patterns meant their brains did not learn new skills properly.
Unlike mammals and birds, reptiles are unable to experience slow wave sleep, the type of sleep believed to be responsible for boosting memories, especially those connected to performing new tasks.
As a result, reptiles are much more limited in the type of complex behaviour they can experience than other animals such as mammals and birds.
The implication of new research by Niels Rattenborg, of the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, is that the inability of dinosaurs - which are ancestors of modern-day reptiles - to experience slow wave sleep may have been one of the reasons why they became extinct.
Slow wave - or deep - sleep leads to enhancements in both learning and physical performance. It effectively shuts down the parts of the brain that have learned new skills and allows this learning to become consolidated without interruption.
Without this crucial ability it could be that, when the earth experienced huge climatic changes towards the end of the era of the dinosaurs, they were unable to pick up sufficient new tricks to learn their way out of extinction.
The research also shows that, although birds and mammals appear to have developed the same brain structures and, importantly, the same series of connections between structures that allow slow wave sleep to take place, these developments must have happened independently.
Despite the common ancestry of birds and reptiles among the dinosaurs, regarding sleep at least it is in fact birds and mammals that have more in common in terms of brain structure and function.
I knew it wasn't a meteor!
Gee, and here I thought it was ciggies...
I figured this would be an article about MSM. Huh.
I think these "scientists" aren't getting enough sleep. It seems they come out with a new hairbrained idea once a week now.
How about they just give up and say "we don't know what the heck made them extinct."
Dinosaurs ruled the Earth for 200 million years, I guess it must have been a slow killer.
Or, how about they all turned into Gays and Lesbians and just quit breeding? That makes sense. It was cigarettes, an over active night life, and gayness that did it.
Another example of evolution being the "theory of whatever happened."
You just have to bow down to the majestic factual precision of darwinist "science."
Another unproven myth stated as fact. There are No transitional forms ever found. no "common ancestors". Just like the Human fossil record, they just suddenly appeared. Human skulls are human, monkey skulls are monkey, there is NO transitional fossil record.
T-Rex: "Hey, keep it down out there!!! I'm trying to get some sleep!!!"
What a kooky theory.
Well, this makes sense. I mean, how well would YOU sleep if you had to worry about giant rocks, raging fires, tsunamis, and ice floes all the time?
Not enough fiber doncha know.
Just another way of saying dino's couldn't "adapt" to catastrophic environmental changes. Which, if i am not mistaken, has been the theory all along. Citing the reason they could not adapt does not mean that a giant did not result in their extinction.
That's like saying, "the man crossing the highway wasn't killed because he was hit by a car, but because he wasn't fast enough to get out of it's way."
Either way, the car killed him.
This scientist must be in desperate need of grant money to come up with something like this. Perhaps he isn't getting enough sleep.
When I was a kid I had a pet Boa Constrictor (snake). All the thing did was eat (once every two weeks) and sleep. If sleep is the main factor, he shoulda been Einstein.
This reminds me, I need to defrag my hard drive...
Ohhhh.... that's what it was! How would I get along without these overpaid mooks telling me what's what?
Seriously, it was probably smoking.
Fancy way of saying that the small, furry and big brained outwitted and outlasted the large, scaled and pea brained.
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