Antarctica 'Lost World' Found

Two teams of researchers, working separately thousands of miles from each other but both defeating incredible odds, have made stunning finds in frozen Antarctica -- so stunning that the National Science Foundation calls their discoveries evidence of a lost world.

The researchers found what they believe to be the fossilized remains of two species of dinosaurs previously unknown to science. One is a 70-million-year old quick-moving meat-eater found on the bottom of an Antarctic sea, while and the other is a 200-million-year-old giant plant-eater that was found on the top of a mountain, reports Reuters.

The lost world in which these two dinosaurs lived was very different from the Antarctica we know now. Their Antarctica was not frigid and frozen. Their Antarctica was warm and wet.

The 70-million-year-old carnivore was small for a dinosaur at just 6 to 8 feet tall. Scientists believe it is an entirely new species of carnivorous dinosaur that is related to the enormous meat-eating tyrannosaurs and the equally voracious, but smaller and swifter, velociraptors. Think "Jurassic Park." Now scream in terror! Found on James Ross Island off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula by a team led by Judd Case from St. Mary's College of California, it likely floated out to sea after it died and then sank to the bottom of the Weddell Sea. Reuters explains that its bones and teeth show that it was a two-legged animal that survived in the Antarctic long after other predators took over elsewhere on the globe. "One of the surprising things is that animals with these more primitive characteristics generally haven't survived as long elsewhere as they have in Antarctica," Case told Reuters.

The 200-million-year-old herbivore, a primitive sauropod that had a long neck and four legs, was found by a team led by William Hummer from Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois on the 13,000-foot high Mt. Kirkpatrick near the Beardmore Glacier. When this dino lived, the area was a soft riverbed. The team found dinosaur bones, specifically part of a huge pelvis and ilium. "This site is so far removed geographically from any site near its age, it's clearly a new dinosaur to Antarctica," Hammer told Reuters. This dinosaur was probably about 30 feet long, but was part of a lineage that went on to produce animals as large as 100 feet long.

Both excavations were supported by the National Science Foundation, an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering.

The change in climate probably had more to do with continental drift than any general changes in global temperatures. Antarctica was at one time much closer to if not astride the equator as part of the unified continent of Pangea

ok, a SMALL bit of the climate change could have been plate shift. But even the MOST active plates have been moving less than an inch per year, and Antarctica is not one of them.

But giving it the benefit of the doubt, and using a worst-case 1" per year, only accounts for 1100 miles in 70M years. By comparison, the distance between the North pole and Nome Alaska today is 1700 miles, and no one calls that a "warm climate".

Even the Pangea theory says Antarctica was fairly close to the south pole 135M years ago (shown).

My own opinion, is that IF the earth's climate pendulum is currently swinging toward it's WARMER historical extremes, we're much better off than another ice age! (and the Kyoto global warming due-to-man theory is total B.S.)

Here's what U.W/Stout says about climate changes...

The earth has experienced numerous periods of global cooling and warming. The duration and intensity (degree of cooling and warming) of each period varies. As a period of cooling occurs, glaciers advance and the sea level falls. When warming occurs, the glaciers retreat and the sea level increases.

There exists some evidence that most of the earth's surface was once (maybe several times) covered with ice. This comes from studying the isotopic ratio of carbon 12 and carbon 13 found in ocean floor sediments. This ratio can be related to the average climatic temperature. These measurements suggests a global ice age (or a "snowball earth") happened around 570-700 million years ago and several episodes of glaciation have happened in more recent times (~1 million years ago).

The most recent period of extensive glaciation peaked about 18,000 years ago. Surprisingly, the average global temperature does not need to change significantly for there to be a period of large-scale glaciation. Only about 5oC change is necessary.

The Pleistocene Epoch (about 1 million years ago) of Geologic Time has been called the "Ice Age". About 20 cycles of warming and cooling occurred during this epoch. However, periods of glaciation have happened during other epochs (or periods) of geologic time.

Variations in the Earth's orbit and inclination to the Sun.
Plate tectonics and the changing position of continents.
Changes in the atmosphere. For example, if a sufficient number of volcanoes erupted in a short period of time, the amount of sun light penetrating the atmosphere may decrease from volcanic dust and ash in the upper atmosphere.
Changes in sea water circulation.

Theories 1 and 2 above, seem to hold the most promise and are often cited in explaining the periods of glaciation.

A detailed calculation (using the laws of physics) shows that the Earth undergoes slight variations in its motion with respect to the Sun. This causes differing amounts of sun light to fall on different locations at different times on the Earth. [Credit for the first such analysis is usually given to Milutin Milankovitch, a Yugoslavian scientist.]

Re: Crashed plane.

Try a little experiment for us. Take a block of ice and a quarter. Now heat the quarter. Once it is cherry red, go ahead and put it on top of the ice block. Once it cools off, being caferul not to spill any of the melted ice, refreeze the block.

An "ice core" sample taken from outside the melt zone would show the original age of the ice. Only the melted portion burying the object would have a different "age". Mostly entrained gas composition and dust/pollen counts are used to deliniated random climatological changes from seaonal/annual ones.

Also, a dark object set on ice will heat at a different rate than the surrounding highly reflective ice. Anyone who has left an fish house on a frozen lake can attest to this phenomena.

But that's OK. Go shake your spear at the new moom to make it come back.

"Either I believe what God has said,"

I hope this doesn't offend you too much, and I know this may start some fireworks... But I have two problems with this statement.

One: There is not one line in the bible that attributes the age of the earth being spoken by God.

Two: The Bible was writen by men. Though I am sure they were full of faith and devinely inspired, they were men. Keep your faith in The Lord my friend. The Book is tool, learn from it, love it, cherish the lessons it strives to teach - don't worship it. After all, the bible is an earthly thing made by men, for men, inspired by God. It isn't God himself.

I always find it amazing that people will trust that a man lived over 920 years based upon what's written by man -without any evidence at all- but will not trust that men lived 8,000 years ago even when presented with mounds of evidence. At some point acceptance of one writen word over another stops being 'faith' and begins to be willing ignorance. (I mean that only in the literal way, The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed. NOT as an insult.)

Perhaps you should list for others here on this thread, the empirical evidence that any man has lived for 200 years. Understand, you must choose more than one source (I don't care who coppied it from an earlier source or how it was re-written, you must use more than one original source.) I'm sure that most on this thread would be amazed at such a find.

Why Does the Earth Experience Periods of Warming Or Cooling?
Theories presented to explain periods of glaciation:

Variations in the Earth's orbit and inclination to the Sun.
Plate tectonics and the changing position of continents.
Changes in the atmosphere. For example, if a sufficient number of volcanoes erupted in a short period of time, the amount of sun light penetrating the atmosphere may decrease from volcanic dust and ash in the upper atmosphere.
Changes in sea water circulation.

There's another theory that IMO makes more sense -- the Sun (a rather small "dwarfish" star) has a cycle of its own, slowly expanding due to the heat of it ongoing fusion reaction, until it can no longer sustain the reaction. The "missing neutrinos" are therefore, according to this theory, explained by the fact that the Sun is currently not in its fusion state.

Then (according to the theory), as it gradually cools down, it contracts, and compresses, until it reaches a certain point, at which point it again begins the fusion reaction, and the cycle begins anew.

These cycles, again, according to the theory, explain the ice ages that occur every 14,000 years or so. According to the historical cycle, we're already something like 4,000 years into "the next ice age", and it's only several thousand years of human activity that are holding it back.

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