[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]
Okay, but it seems to have brought about a mass die-off of paragraphs! :)
DC is heavily fertilized by BS from Ditch, Weasel Mueller, CNN, H->!, et.al.
The headline suggests present tense. Kind of 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.)
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
(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.
Welcome back!!!
For thousands of years earthworms were the earth movers in he US south. They turned the soil more than any other creature...until now. The invasive Red Fire Ant that entered the US at the port of Mobile in the 1930's are everywhere now and doing the majority of earth moving.
Great Caesar’s ghost! Idiots with a doctorate had to do research to determine that dung is fertilizer. Dear Scotty, we implore you! Please beam us up!
Some of these ideas are a load of fertilizer, but they won’t help the plants.
The CO2 levels at the time of the dinosaurs was 5 times greater than today. CO2 is plant food. Plants were abundant and lush. Plant eating dinosaurs ate them and meat eating dinosaurs ate the plant eaters and as a result a lot of dinosaur crap was abundant.
I did not even need a federal grant to figure this out.