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Mass Extinctions: 'Giant' Fossils Are Revolutionizing Current Thinking
ScienceDaily ^ | February 11, 2010 | Adapted from materials provided by CNRS

Posted on 02/15/2010 11:29:02 AM PST by SunkenCiv

Large-sized gastropods (up to 7 cm) dating from only 1 million years after the greatest mass extinction of all time, the Permian-Triassic extinction, have been discovered by an international team including a French researcher from the Laboratoire Biogéosciences (CNRS/Université de Bourgogne), working with German, American and Swiss colleagues. These specimens call into question the existence of a "Lilliput effect," the reduction in the size of organisms inhabiting postcrisis biota, normally spanning several million years. The team's results... have drastically changed paleontologists' current thinking regarding evolutionary dynamics and the way the biosphere functions in the aftermath of a mass extinction event... Over the last 540 million years, around twenty mass extinctions, of greater or lesser intensity, have succeeded one another. The most devastating of these, the Permian-Triassic (P-T) mass extinction, which decimated more than 90% of the marine species existing at the time, occurred 252.6 million years ago with a violence that is still unequaled today.

In the aftermath of such events, environmental conditions are severely disrupted: the oceans become less oxygenated, water becomes poisonous, there is increased competition, collapse of food chains, etc. Until now, it has generally been accepted that certain marine organisms, such as gastropods or bivalves, were affected by a drastic reduction in size in response to major disruptions of this nature, both during and after the event. It took several million years for such organisms to return to sizes comparable to those that existed prior to the crisis. This is what scientists call the "Lilliput effect," in reference to the travels of Gulliver who was shipwrecked on the island of the same name, inhabited by very small Lilliputians.

(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy; History; Science; Travel
KEYWORDS: catastrophism; godsgravesglyphs
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To: SunkenCiv; Ernest_at_the_Beach; Swordmaker

The Impossible Dinosaurs - Megafauna and Attenuated Gravity
Kronia.com ^ | Ted Holden

Posted on Friday, March 21, 2008 8:01:20 PM by Swordmaker

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1989265/posts

THE BEST MEGAFAUNA THREAD OF ALL TIME IMO!


21 posted on 02/15/2010 1:31:28 PM PST by Fred Nerks (fair dinkum!)
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To: SunkenCiv
Some fossils survive to this day.


22 posted on 02/15/2010 1:52:49 PM PST by scoobysnak71 (I'm light skinned with no negro dialect. Could you milk me?)
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To: BereanBrain

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2451899/posts?page=21#21


23 posted on 02/15/2010 1:59:23 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Happy New Year! Freedom is Priceless.)
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To: scoobysnak71

Bill Clinton thinks she’s hot!


24 posted on 02/15/2010 2:09:40 PM PST by Randy Larsen ( BTW, If I offend you! Please let me know, I may want to offend you again!(FR #1690))
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To: EnderWiggins

No, the theory says the SAME animals that live today were larger in the past.

Haven’t found ancient blue whale fossils from that period yet, but new finds are happening all the time.....

Most marine animals would not be killed in a meteor strike/flood due to the buffering effects of living in a deep ocean....they might die later of starvation, but that is a slower event that preditation can destroy evidence easily...

In a functioning eco-system, nothing is left to waste, there are very few animals that are not fully consumed after death.


25 posted on 02/15/2010 3:54:42 PM PST by BereanBrain
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To: SunkenCiv
A giant one would feed a family for a week - if you could find enough garlic and butter.


26 posted on 02/16/2010 10:12:48 AM PST by colorado tanker
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To: Nachum; All

Of course there was a great flood, after the asteroid the size of Washington, DC crashed into the Yucatan. Probably was a thousand foot high tsunami hitting the Gulf Coast.


27 posted on 02/17/2010 1:31:30 PM PST by gleeaikin
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