Posted on 04/21/2004 11:45:26 AM PDT by Junior
You have something against happy dinosaurs?
This theory might be as half-baked as dinosaur eggs, but it did remind me of something I've advocated for modern times. If we could come up with a simple pill to make the conception of males very much more likely, and get it out into the Muslim world, our problems of the last thousand years might be over with in a generation or two. Making sure the pill was illegal would make it nearly guaranteed that it would be used.
Seems like a good plan for Africa, and any other society that makes women into property.
Fassett, J, R.A. Zielinski, & J.R. Budahn, 2002. Dinosaurs that did not die; evidence for Paleocene dinosaurs in the Ojo Alamo Sandstone, San Juan Basin, New Mexico. In: Catastrophic events and mass extinctions; impacts and beyond. (Eds. Koeberl, C. & K. MacLeod): Special Paper - Geological Society of America 356: 307-336. (2002).
AB: Palynologic and paleomagnetic data confirm a Paleocene age for the Ojo Alamo Sandstone (and its contained dinosaurs) throughout the San Juan Basin of New Mexico. The recently reported discovery of 34 skeletal elements from a single hadrosaur in the Ojo Alamo provides unequivocal evidence that these bones were not reworked from underlying Cretaceous strata. Geochemical studies of samples from several single-dinosaur-bone specimens from the Paleocene Ojo Alamo Sandstone and the underlying Late Cretaceous (Campanian) Kirtland Formation show that mineralized bones from these two rock units contain distinctly different abundances of uranium and rare-earth elements and demonstrate that Cretaceous and Paleocene bones were mineralized at different times when mineralizing fluids had distinctly different chemical compositions. These findings indicate that the dinosaur bone from the Paleocene Ojo Alamo is indigenous and not reworked. These data show that a relatively diverse assemblage of dinosaurs survived the end-Cretaceous asteroid-impact extinction event of 65.5 Ma. The San Juan Basin's Paleocene dinosaur fauna is herein named the Alamoan fauna. Magnetic-polarity chronology shows that these survivors lived for about one million years into the Paleocene and then became extinct around 64.5 Ma. We suggest that a plausible survival mechanism for this Lazarus fauna may have been the large numbers of buried dinosaur eggs, laid just before the asteroid impact occurred. These buried eggs would have provided a safe haven for developing dinosaur embryos for the first one to two years after the impact, thereby making it possible for them to survive the worst of the impact's early devastation.
The fully documented Paleocene dinosaur bone from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone at the San Juan River site, bolsters conclusions [5, 1] that the dinosaur-bone assemblage from the Ojo Alamo Sandstone in the vicinity of Alamo Wash is also of Paleocene age, even though vertebrate paleontologists have assigned a Lancian age to that assemblage.
Read that PDF and you will see that they considered that. The PDF also has a graphic which shows the fossil in relation to the cretaceous/tertiary boundary. But I have doubts whether anything could be recognizable after being buried, eroded, buried and eroded again.
But by then they're my age.
You have a point. I, too, consider birds to be the dino legacy. However, the Cretaceous extinction did happen, and the paleontological evidence is indisputable. Many, many genera disappeared at, or near, the end of the Cretaceous. Vertebrate paleontologists, such as Robert Bakker, point out that the large dinosuars were in decline for some time prior to the Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) boundary. In fact, early large dino forms died out at the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary!
I have a book on the K/T boundary that I purchased at a geological convention a few years ago. I am convinced that there is evidence for dinosaurs geologically above (younger than) the so-called asteroid impact iridium layer of Alvarez, et al., 1980. The asteroid impact may very well have happened, and may have had significant climatological effects, but it doesn't explain everything about the K/T extinction. Though the dinosaurs were greatly impacted, lizards, snakes, turtles, and crocs survived.
For instance, why did the ammonoids completely die out and yet, their close cousins, the nautiloids, survive? Why did many species of plants die out, and yet others that occupied similar niches survive? Why did the rudist bivavles go extinct as compared to the other bivalve genera?
I am very familiar (professionally) with the micropaleontology of the K/T boundary. Many diatoms, nannoplankton, and forams suddenly disappear, while others remain abundant. It can not all be accounted for by ecological niche or geographical distribution.
I suspect that with the terrestrial lifeforms, climate change, loss of habitat, and disease contributed greatly. I can easliy imagine a species or genus becoming so enfeebled that it cannot continue on. With the aquatic forms you can add change in ocean chemistry as a causitive factor. This is especially true with the micro-assemblages. Maybe what is most remarkable is that mammals and amphibians sailed right through. Why so? How were they better able to adapt?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.