Posted on 06/02/2009 7:59:10 AM PDT by BGHater
A THREE-TOED dinosaur which once roamed the Isle of Skye may have been the same species as one whose prints have been found in the Red Gulch mountains in Wyoming, paleontologists said yesterday.
The 170 million-year-old tracks are so similar that Glasgow paleontologist Neil Clark believes the Wyoming dinosaurs may have swum or waded over to Skye – which at that time was part of an island off the east coast of America.
US scientists now plan to put his theories to the test, using 3D mapping technology to compare both sets of footprints.
Dr Clark, Curator of Paleontology at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, said: "The fact that the footprints in Wyoming and the ones in Scotland are so similar suggest that they may have been produced by a very similar kind of dinosaur, if not the same species. It is just a case of comparing them to see if they match."
Many of the dinosaur prints on Skye were discovered in the 1980s when cliffs crumbled into the sea. The prints in Wyoming were found in 1997, along the shoreline of what would have been the Sundance Sea.
Using the evidence of the footprints, which are between one and eight inches long, Dr Clark believes the tracks were made by a two-legged therapod which would have been around two metres long and around one metre high.
"There really is a paucity of specimens from the middle Jurassic period – which is why we know so little about it," he said. "There are a number of different kinds of animal that could have produced a similar kind of footprint. We don't have any other specimens so we can't give it a name."
Dr Clark said he was delighted scientists in Wyoming were to test his theory that the inhabitants of Skye and Red Gulch may have migrated across the continent and waded or swum across to Skye. At that time Scotland and Wyoming were 2,500 miles apart, rather than 4,500 miles distant as they are today.
"I don't mind if they prove I'm right or they disprove the theory, but it is always good to see the advancement of our knowledge," he said.
Brent Breithaupt, head of the Geological Museum at the University of Wyoming, said the 3D imaging techniques will make minute comparisons of the dimensions of both sets of prints.
The new technology uses overlapping photographs to construct 3D images which can then be measured and compared in detail.
Dr Breithaupt said: "The tracks are similar, that's what we know. It more than likely indicates similar types of dinosaurs living at higher latitudes at some point in time.
"Tracks can be looked at in three dimensions on computer screens and can be rotated around by various researchers and can be compared."
He and fellow researcher Neffra Matthews travelled to the west coast to take photographs of the tracks found on Skye, which is the only place in Scotland where dinosaur remains have been found.
Dr Breithaupt said that comparing data would help scientists discover more about the mid-Jurassic period.
"What we hope will eventually happen is that there will be this huge virtual archive that can be shared worldwide," he said.
Swim, wade? ping
Precisely! When I was in Grad school back in the 1970s (before everything was totally PC), a fellow geographer was studying a frog in Brazil that also could be found in Africa - all to prove continents were once connected - something that is now pretty accepted - continental drift, tectonic plates, earth is a sphere.... I also believe that petroleum is an abiotic material from the earth’s mantle and is in very plentiful supply all over the earth. Call me crazy!
what is your opinion on this?
‘abiotic material from the earth’s mantle and is in very plentiful supply all over the earth.’
Not crazy. I have similar theories; many a USSR scientist believed as well.
Prior to ‘drifting apart’ a portion of Scotland was adjacent to the Catskill Mountains in NY — or so I learned on The History Channel.
You called?
or, that guy from California who made fake Bigfoot shoes and put prints all over the west coast has expanded his work.. :)
I'm certainly open to that possibility...One would think that if petroleum came from living organisms, it would have been renewing itself over the aeons, would continue to do so. Likewise, many people consider methane an organic compound until they are asked what organisms produced all the methane on Uranus and Neptune....
ah hahaha.. I clicked on the thread just looking for that pic.
Even 170 million years ago, Tibet didn’t want to be a part of China ....
Carry the lad
Who was born to be King
Over the seas to Skye.
That was nice ! I first heard it in a Clancy Brothers album.
Looking at the You Tube thread, I noticed an autoharp version as well. (Hmm.. Wonder if I could find the chords somewhere ? I’ll check later.)
Thanks !
Oops ! My apologies for “jumping the thread” !
I love that song!
My apologies also for “jumping the thread”.
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Thanks BGHater. Comments from any MacLeods out there? |
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Thanks for the link!
That used to be the proper attitude for scientists. It's been a while since I heard on speak like that.
LOL. Methane is an organic compound.
Organic = carbon containing.
Methane is also produced by living organisms, but something need not be produced by a living organism to be an “organic” compound; it just needs to contain carbon.
We are “carbon based” life forms. We are called that because all our macromolecular structures are mostly long hydrocarbon chains of nucleic or amino acids.
Just a nitpick on that map but isn’t Italy part of the African plate and met up with Europe much later?
Good to hear it.
Maybe they had a strong incentive, like a rumor that single malt Scotch made for much better drinking than Coors beer?
HAHAHAHAA
Beautiful. Thanks for posting.
As you wish. How does one create from abiotic material the molecular remnants of chlorophyll, marine algae, and flowering land plants that are found in many crude oils? For example, crude oils whose shale source beds were deposited before the evolution of flowering plants do not contain the molecular biomarkers for flowering plants.
That is not to say that some low molecular weight hydrocarbons (i.e, natural gas) might not be generated abiotically in deep formations, but it is not the source of most crude oils.
If you take the organic matter deposited in shales and heat it in a lab, you create oil with all the appropriate biomarkers. Secondly, oil is not found in large amounts in areas that do not have access to large organic shale (or in some cases, carbonate) source beds. If Gold's theory of abiotic formation of petroleum were correct and abiotic petroleum is available everywhere, then why aren't significant amounts of oil found in source-bed deficient areas?
Oil reservoirs that refill are by far the exception rather than the rule. There are explanations for the phenomena including continuing upward "spill" of oil from lower reservoirs (most oils being lighter than formation waters) or migration of oil from active source beds that are still in the thermal window of oil generation.
“...molecular remnants of chlorophyll, marine algae, and flowering land plants...”
I guess you answered your own question. If oil is made from primordial ooze of decayed dinosaurs, why would it have plant life in it? It’s just part of the mix when the oil bubbles up from deep below through the layers of decayed plant matter. The point is that “new” oil is found all the time yet the eco-nazis are running around crying that “there is a finite supply - we’re running out - stopping burning fossil fuels....” That just doesn’t make much sense to me.
Your assumption is wrong. Oil doesn't come from dinosaurs despite what the old Sinclair filling station signs suggested.
Here is a description of how oil forms. [Link]. Most of it comes from the heating of marine algae over geologic time. Some comes from land plants from lake or river sediment, and a few coals can form oil.
Kerogen, the organic matter in shale that is the precursor of oil, is by far the largest accumulation of carbon in the world.
Okham's/Ockham's/Occam's razor applies here. Why are oils found near shale/carbonate source beds but not elsewhere? If oil is abiotic and simply bubbling up from down below, why isn't it coming up everywhere? Why does it come up near shale/carbonate source beds? Why did Sweden not drill any more wells after the one that Professor Gold convinced them to drill to find the abiotic oil he theorized was there?
High temperatures break up organic molecules, so the longer and deeper organic material is buried, then the more likely it is to have turned into gas rather than oil. That is why deep wells often are gas wells. If burial is long enough and hot enough, what you may find is a carbon residue called pyro-bitumen.
I don't like enviro-waccos any more than you do. Yet there is indeed a finite supply of cheap oil. As that runs out we will shift to more and more expensive sources of oil. Tar sands are probably the next cheapest source of oil after conventional liquid oil reservoirs. Eventually that too will run out, but long after you and I are dead. There are other even more expensive sources.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=liquid-lake-on-titan
how do you explain this?
I kinda wish it was still like that. I’d be able to visit more places.
Yes, the Appalachians are part of the mountain range that extended from North America through England and into Europe terminating as the present day Urals.
Plenty of oil is available here in the USA and we’re not doing much to get at it (regardless of how it was originally formed). I agree that alternatives are needed, but am totally against artificially increasing prices to precipitate a faster transition to those alternatives. Like the horse and buggy, gas-powered vehicles will someday go the same way. In the meanwhile, keep your windmills and solar panels — I live in a cloudy state with plentiful coal and natural gas. Clean nuclear power — I want that, too.
These are your carbon based units? Yes, that's right. They are inferior and imperfect, I am Nomad, I am perfect..
As far as present day technology is concerned the only viable renewable alternative is Nuclear power. Wind and solar are simply not usable in large enough amounts to take the place of oil, coal and natural gas.
As I said, I have no problem with abiotic formation of light hydrocarbons. As your linked article suggested ethane might form from sunlight operating on methane. The methane on Titan might have been formed abiotically rather than by life. Carbon reacts chemically with other elements if the conditions are right.
The vast bulk of methane and ethane on earth very probably comes from thermal degradation of kerogen by diagenesis and catagenesis. You can duplicate the process in the lab.
I agree with you, and I live in a windy, sunny state.
I can see some organic material that might of existed on Titan but it rains hydrocarbons there.
The earth got its carbon in the same way. Life evolved on earth and that ultimately led to the formation of kerogen here, which is where the bulk of carbon is now stored. As far as I know, there isn't life on Titan that could have generated its methane and ethane. But who knows? Maybe there are some tiny critters there consuming methane and creating proteins and depositing their dead bodies at the bottom of methane lakes. See: Link about Titan life precursors.
Surface temperature on Titan is about -179C. At earth's atmospheric pressure, liquid methane boils at -161.5C (a higher temperature), so liquid methane and methane rain could likely exist on Titan.
If it was being renewed, but at a rate far lower than the rate of extraction, then that would be irrelevant.
And if it were being renewed at a rate faster than we were using it, we'd be up to our a$$es in it...
if the hydrocarbons came from some sort of life then that is a huge discovery in itself.
But if the hydrocarbons came from synthetic carbon base formation then that would mean that hydrocarbons could from by two different types of sources.
Lets take the synthetic example and apply it to the Earth.
As you said most of the carbon on the earth is locked up in kerogen or some sort of organic life.
That makes a lot of sense. Now here is my question. What about the carbon that is deep in the earth that are not locked up in some type of organic life? Could these carbons produce hydrocarbons in a similar way as those on Titan?
If so then these hydrocarbons would eventually bubble up closer to the surface.
A good example of this recently found on earth could be Methane hydrate. The estimates of Methane hydrate found on the ocean floor which we just started looking in the past 10 years and we haven’t even started to tap into yet is by far greater then all oil reserves on the planet.
It would be fascinating to land an instrument package on Titan.
Large reserves of methane hydrates have been known on earth for many, many years, not just the past 10 years. Methane hydrates underlie much of the arctic permafrost and deep (cold) offshore sediments near the edges of continents. Hydrates form in some gas pipelines, and oil and gas companies have to treat those particular pipeline streams to suppress hydrate formation.
It can be hazardous to take core samples in methane hydrate beds as the methane can be released in the core barrel in a pressure explosion as the core warms up and the hydrates melt.
The hangup to commercializing the production of methane from hydrates is that there has been no practical economic method of producing the methane in situ.
The hang up is the 'global warming' scare mongering.
I forget the relative equilibrium and energies between CO2 hydrate and methane hydrate. It could be that an excess of CO2, if you could get enough into a methane hydrate bed, would replace methane in the clathrate structure. You’d have to get more energy out of the produced methane than you put into buying, compressing, and injecting CO2 and compressing the resulting methane to pipeline pressure. You’d also want to be sure that the formation didn’t collapse or slump around the wellbore like what happens when permafrost melts around a wellbore. Interesting idea though. Thanks.
I looked up CO2 hydrate and see references on Wikipedia to an old aquaintance of mine, Dendy (sp?) Sloan, who used to take hydrate data.
I hear the US government is already pumping CO2 into the ground for no good reason other then the fear mongering. So if they can just pump it there instead.
Injecting CO2 underground to minimize any anthropogenic global warming will have only a minuscule effect and is a waste of effort and money. Fluctuations of the sun are what drive global temperatures.
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