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Posted on 11/04/2003 7:12:36 AM PST by presidio9
Edited on 04/29/2004 2:03:22 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Low oxygen levels could have triggered two giant extinctions hundreds of millions of years ago, allowing the dinosaurs to reign supreme over the ancestors of mammals, U.S. researchers said.
Dinosaurs first appeared during a long period of low oxygen and therefore developed highly efficient breathing mechanisms that allowed them to thrive while many other species became extinct.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
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That's for sure, and I kind of wonder at this sighting. Those geese would have to be flapping like mad to keep aloft in air that thin, never mind the breathing problem. It's hard to see how they could generate enough lift.
We used to have a creationist poster (medved) who was often asking "Birds from dinosaurs!? How could a dinosaur ever evolve a bird's flow-through lungs?" This is basically it. Dinosaurs, not birds, evolved the lungs back when being at sea level was like being at 20,000 feet now. Lots of other things including the ancestors of mammals were dropping like flies or barely hanging on at the time, but dinosaurs blundered onto the key.
Gary Landis, of the US Geological Survey, measured oxygen in microscopic air bubbles trapped in amber, a fossilised tree resin. He found that the amount of oxygen dropped from 35 per cent 2 million years before the end of the Cretaceous period, to 28 per cent just after the end of the Cretaceous - the time when the dinosaurs all but disappeared. Today, the oxygen level is at 21 per cent...
Most scientists agree the impact of an asteroid or meteor was the catalyst.
Not true either, Dumb Reporters think it sounds counds cool so they report it as such but most scientist do not, The only ones that claim to believe in the silly Asteroid Hypothesis just want a free trip to Cancun
Shouldn't this read "Ancient Hebrew nomads thought they knew better, because they came up with a creation story without benefit of science"?
Christians shouldn't care, since Christ's message is, pardon the term, agnostic toward the method God used to create the planet. Like many modern day intelligent design folks, if Jesus had stopped to explain the creation process in scientific terms, the people of Israel circa 30 A.D. would have spent too much time arguing for their myth and not enough time understanding His true message. As it was, He had enough trouble convincing them of that without throwing biology and geology into the mix.
LTS
Thinking about our discussion, it occurs to me that it is vitally important for Christian thinkers to realize the point about message and method of conveying the message. If the best we can offer is the "pay no attention to the facts in that textbook" approach, the whole of the belief system can lose credibility. The best and brightest go into the sciences, see for themselves the natural world and the evidence of its multi-billion-year creation, and are then faced with the "you're not Christian if you believe your eyes" message. This is a needless test of faith in a world filled with them, and worse, pits the intellect God gave us against what our religous leaders espouse.
BTW, feel free to use the tagline - the more the merrier (and maybe more effective)
LTS
Most scientists believe in God, but don't let a little thing like the truth get in the way of a good zinger.
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