Thanks SteveH. I dung think I would have seen this otherwise. Attn all: this marks my first posted topic since returning, also the first time I've added any keywords in that same time frame.
Posted on 10/28/2017 3:25:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Christopher Doughty, faculty member in the School of Informatics, Computing and Cyber Systems at Northern Arizona University... "Theory suggests that large animals are disproportionately important to the spread of fertility across the planet... What better way to test this than to compare fertility in the world during the Cretaceous period -- where sauropods, the largest herbivores to exist, roamed freely -- to the Carboniferous period -- a time in Earth's history before four-legged erbivores evolved." During these two periods, plants were buried faster than they could decompose. As a result, coal was formed. Doughty gathered coal samples from mines throughout the U.S. By measuring the coal elemental concentrations, he found elements needed by plants, like phosphorus, were more abundant and much better distributed during the era of the dinosaurs than the Carboniferous. The data also revealed that elements not needed by plants and animals, such as aluminum, showed no difference, suggesting the herbivores contributed to increased global fertility. According to Doughty, these large animals are important not for the quantity of dung they produce, but for their ability to move long distances across landscapes, effectively mixing the nutrients. By increasing the abundance and distribution of elements like phosphorus, plants grow faster, meaning large herbivores are responsible for producing their own food and contributing to their lush habitats... Simply put, fewer large animals may mean less plant growth."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
[snip]The study places the evolution of dung beetles at about 115 to 130 million years ago in the Lower Cretaceous. "Surprisingly, the timing and diversification of dung beetles is correlated with the ecological dominance of angiosperms," said lead author Dr. Nicole Gunter, invertebrate zoology collections manager at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History. "Through these findings, we hypothesize that the incorporation of flowering plants in the diet of dinosaurs resulted in the first palatable dung source for feeding..." ... "Dinosaurs were the dominant terrestrial animals for 135 million years and definitely shaped ecosystems throughout their existence," said co-author Dr. Stephen Cameron of Queensland University of Technology in Australia. "This paper is the first to demonstrate that the speciation of a group was tied to utilizing dinosaurs as an ecological resource--their dung." The scientists note the existence of dinosaur coprolites (fossilized feces) showing evidence of tunneling attributed to dung beetle feeding dated at 70 to 80 million years ago, which is in line with the new hypothesis on dung beetle evolution outlined in this new study.[/snip] -- New evidence connects dung beetle evolution to dinosaurs [May 4, 2016]
Thanks SteveH. I dung think I would have seen this otherwise. Attn all: this marks my first posted topic since returning, also the first time I've added any keywords in that same time frame.
Okay, but it seems to have brought about a mass die-off of paragraphs! :)
Earthworm’s plight is early warning of threat to man
The Times | July 29, 2008 | Mike Wade
Posted on 07/30/2008 5:31:04 AM PDT by Soliton
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/2053597/posts
DC is heavily fertilized by BS from Ditch, Weasel Mueller, CNN, H->!, et.al.
Yeah, my excerpting is an extinction-level event. :^)
The headline suggests present tense. Kind of misleading.
Dy-no-media!
It is present tense, so, not misleading.
So that is where french cuisine came from.. (ducks the escargot).. love the bread.
Every drink you take
Every pie you bake
OOO0000oooo...
Does this include the members of the U.S. Senate ?
“Simply put, fewer large animals may mean less plant growth.”
Well them thar ‘science guys’ had better hurry on up with that Woolly Mammoth cloning project, then! I’ve GOTS to have my ‘maters and ‘taters! ;)
If there was a vote, I vote for this as most wonderful headline ever. (Well, except for Trump winning.)
Okay, are they truly suggesting that dung 65 million years old us still fertilizing the planet? I’m not buying it.
Why is a guy in the Artificial Intelligence Dept. talking about dinosaurs when he can be working on NASA Robonaut?
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/nasa-jsc-unveils-valkyrie-drc-robot
Welcome back! Missed your posts!
Interesting. I do not think there is any question that large animals helped make nutrients available, spread bacteria, and fertilized the earth. However....
As something of a gardener, I have to argue here for the earthworm. Earth worms predate Dinosaurs and are little soil enriching bacteria factories. What comes out is more nutrient rich than the inputs, and they have been at it a longer time. The Dinosaurs, for the most part, came and went. (The Conquering Worm endures!)
https://www.quora.com/How-old-are-earthworms-as-a-species
“Earthworms had almost certainly started emerging by the Devonian period when plants began to spread across dry land and develop roots. Fossils have been found for modern forms from the following Carboniferous period 360-300 MYA.
So yes, they predate the Dinosaurs. Worms in general pre-date all vertebrates. When exactly earthworms got a foothold in the soil is hard to pinpoint, my guess is that the spread of free sporing vascular plants expanded a new ecological niche which earthworms filled.”
You mean some of these http://allrecipes.com/video/6650/baking-bacon/?internalSource=picture_play&referringId=255277&referringContentType=recipe and some of these http://allrecipes.com/video/3618/fondant-potatoes/?internalSource=picture_play&referringId=233295&referringContentType=recipe
(Not sure if that's a "one-scoop-dino-poop" or a "two-scoop-dino-poop", but I'm sure that that will probably make a difference somehow to CNN.)
It's decomposed and composted steppe grass.
In the Ukraine, they have a layer of high quality topsoil that is greater than 6 feet deep.
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