Posted on 07/30/2025 11:12:34 AM PDT by Red Badger
No, your car isn’t running on liquefied dinosaurs.
The good stuff, unless you want a stable environment, of course.
Image Credit: Alexander Knyazhinsky/Shutterstock.com
At some point, you have probably heard somewhere that oil comes from dinosaurs, as if every time you fill up at the gas station, you are pumping refined velociraptor into your Volvo. It’s a vivid image, but it’s not true. Despite how widespread the belief is, oil isn’t made from decomposed dinosaurs.
“For some strange reason, the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs has stuck with many people," geologist Reidar Müller from the University of Oslo explained to Science Norway. "But oil comes from trillions of tiny algae and plankton."
As algae and plankton died tens to hundreds of millions of years ago, they sank to the bottom of the sea, where they accumulated and were buried by layers and layers of sediment. Eventually, after millions of years in a high-pressure and low-oxygen environment, the algae and plankton got "cooked" and turned into that sticky black oil we humans apparently can't get enough of, despite the threat of a climate emergency. From here, it seeps upwards until it hits rock it can't make it through, requiring humans to drill it out (or some other natural disaster to set it free again).
VIDEO AT LINK................
While marine dinosaurs – or a T. Rex that discovered its arms weren't particularly well-adapted to swimming – may find themselves on the bottom of the ocean after death, it's unlikely they would get converted into oil themselves.
This is partly because an oxygen-deprived environment is needed to convert organic matter into oil. Once dead, they would have become a meal for smaller aquatic creatures, picking them apart until they got down to the bones, long before they could be buried.
Now to explain why, "if dinosaurs actually existed", their bones aren't everywhere.
An earlier version of this story was published in 2023.
OTOH, you can no longer call transmission fluid “trannie fluid” anymore ... we’ll have to call it gender neutral “shift juice”
Ironic that the author can't keep themselves from pushing a canard--in an article whose purpose was to dispel a canard.
Refill and repeat
I know the earth keeps making more oil. After wells run dry they often start working again when left alone.
I take particular delight in referring to all things shift-related as “ tranny whatever”.
😜
Gosh, who would benefit from promoting the notion of a finite supply of Oil based on deteriorating dinosaur carcasses?? Rocky & his friends! 🤔
https://www.sinclairoil.com/history/1930.html
Proven long ago that was false by all the “new” discoveries around the world. Same goes for primary source Water, but that’s for another day.
A potentially hostile seven mile long alien space craft is racing towards Earth, and we’re talking about Quaker State oil!
Mrs. Reverend Helen Lovejoy
Propaganda. CO2 is plant food and plants are ironically the source of petroleum.
Same here. Dinosaur Gas!
It’s been known for a long time that oil is a renewable source of energy. It only takes a few years before many old dry wells will produce again.
So whos say we couldnt make our own oil today? Oh that’s right big oil. And the government taking payoffs from them and protecting them.
How much plankton did the outer planets and moons have that created all that methane has?
My father was a petroleum engineer. He told me this back in the 70s. Supposedly the fossil fuel myth was created by Rockefeller to increase the price because of limited supply.
Exactly.
My little town has a small sized green dino up on the roof - and it wears a kid’s saddle.
“Fossil fuels” are found throughout our solar system (on Titan, Neptune, Mars etc plus comets) but only on Earth are the vast majority of the same substances believed to be of biotic origin.
Jupiter alone has 10 million times more methane than Earth does and all of Jupiter’s is presumably abiotic.
IMO the abiotic theory merits more study and perhaps alternative explanations for the biotic markers found in Earth’s fossil fuels can be found
I tried to learn how to kiteboard once. I was horrible at it. Could never get up and almost drowned myself. My instructor was a lovely young lady with one hand. Very successful kiteboarder.
“””The Sinclair dinosaur is my favorite gas station logo. “”
Still a few around here with the big green dinosaur out front.
Yes, it’s mainly all light stuff like methane or ethane. The liquids and bigger gas molecules (which we use) are the result of something else, probably an organic process.
Bigger molecules absolutely can be created out of the light gases chemically, but it’s quite the intentional process (that’s what happens in LNG plants) and unlikely to have occurred naturally, let alone all over the planet, while there are a ton of biological ways it happens.
So it’s much more likely to be biological.
Not saying you’re wrong, mind you. But probably not.
I was wrong. It was Chevron. The video at the link is not the one I remember, but the style is similar. Dinosaurs 'hid' underground and those seeking oil have a hard time finding them.
I don't believe the executives believed that dinos became oil; I believe they wanted to create a sense of scarcity.
A 1976 animated commercial for Chevron featured a storyline where a camera glides through ancient earth inhibited by dinosaurs playing hide and seek, which then dissolve into fossil fuel and disappear underground. This commercial is part of the "Best of the 100 Best Commercials: 1976" collection. Another notable mention is the Sinclair Oil Corporation, which has a long history of using dinosaurs in its marketing, starting from 1930. The Sinclair dinosaur, initially called a Brontosaurus, was later referred to as an Apatosaurus, reflecting the evolving scientific understanding of dinosaur classification. The use of dinosaurs in advertising was not limited to Chevron and Sinclair; there were other commercials featuring dinosaurs, such as those for EGGO Waffles with a 'Tiny Dino' spot and various other campaigns.
Sinclair had some dinos too. From an article:
The Sinclair dinosaur is one of the most popular icons in American petroliana.
But where did he come from?
Sinclair’s advertising writers first had the idea to use dinosaurs in Sinclair marketing back in 1930. They were promoting lubricants refined from crude oil believed to have formed when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
The original campaign included a dozen different dinosaurs, but it was the gentle giant, the Apatosaurus, that captured the hearts of Americans.
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