Posted on 02/01/2009 1:11:58 PM PST by NormsRevenge
The last place scientists expected to find the fossil of a freshwater, tropical turtle was in the Arctic. But they did.
The discovery, detailed today in the journal Geology, suggests animals migrated from Asia to North America not around Alaska, as once thought, but directly across a freshwater sea floating atop the warm, salty Arctic Ocean. It also provides additional evidence that a rapid influx of carbon dioxide some 90 million years ago was the likely cause of a super-greenhouse effect that created extraordinary heat in the polar region.
"We've known there's been an interchange of animals between Asia and North America in the late Cretaceous period, but this is the first example we have of a fossil in the High Arctic region showing how this migration may have taken place," said John Tarduno, professor of geophysics at the University of Rochester. "We're talking about extremely warm, ice-free conditions in the Arctic region, allowing migrations across the pole."
Turtles may be slow, but they're known to migrate long distances. Recent satellite tracking found a leatherback turtle traveled 12,774 miles (20,558 kilometers) from Indonesia to Oregon, one of the longest recorded migrations of any vertebrate animal.
Tarduno led an expedition into the Canadian Arctic in 2006 to study ancient aspect of Earth's magnetic field. Knowing the barren location was rich in fossils, they kept an eye out.
The team found the fossil of a tropical, freshwater, Asian turtle. Tarduno's knowledge of Earth's crust allowed him to determine the fossil did not get moved their by shifts in the crust known as tectonic activity. The turtle died and remained where it was found. It has been named the aurora turtle.
That raised a question: How could a freshwater turtle navigate a salty ocean, which existed at the region back then?
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Global warming not caused by human? How can that be?
Wait a minute ... Al Gore tells us that mankind is causing global warming and mankind didn’t exist 90 million years ago.
Algore may have to show cavemen driving SUVs in order to make “Inconvenient Truth II” work with the dumbasses on this planet. It’s a stretch, I know, but most will believe anything they see in movie or DVD format. If it’s shown by the “magic pictures in the magic box”, it must be true.
Wait a minute..
Oh my gosh! 90 million year ago! Wasn’t that when the first Hummers were produced????
Coincidence? I think not!
From the Prius Prissy Brigade
(REAL MEN WEAR PINK!!!!)
The polar bear is just an Alaskan Brown Bear that migrated north about 220,000 years ago. And then turned white so they could hide from the seals.
And what exactly did people think the Tundra was? It's a giant frozen bog. And how did the bog get there in the first place. Question for the student to answer on their own time.
At about 20,000 years ago, the sea was so low you could walk to Siberia from Alaska. Since then the sea has risen about 100 meters. So what's so great about the last foot or two.
The more you know the harder you laugh at Al Gore.
It’s turtles, all the way down.
“..rapid influx of carbon dioxide...”. Must have been all those turtle SUVs.
From page 231 of Steve Jones’ book “Darwin’s Ghost,” a modern update of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species.”
“Five hundred million years ago the air had twenty times as much carbon dioxide as it contains now. This led to a natural “greenhouse effect” which was reversed two hundred million years later when the level of the gas dropped. Oxygen, too, has swung between extremes. Twice as much of the gas as today allowed the growth of enormous plants, of spiders the size of a book, and of scorpions a foot long. A later burst led to the development of aerial reptiles such as Querzalcoatlus, with wings forty feet across. Oxygen’s abundance allowed many animals to burn energy at a rate great enough to persuade them into the air. In today’s attenuated atmosphere, nothing so large could carry the burden of gravity. Even the days of the Earth have changed. As the moon saps its neighbor’s rotational energy, the globe slows its spin. Corals have daily and annual surges of activity, and growth rings from four hundred million years ago show that there were then four hundred days a year. Whatever its state of development, the pace of life in those short and energetic days was faster than it is today.”
“The geological record is the court of last appeal for all theories of evolution. Although biologists still argue about how the process works, fossils make it impossible for anyone, biologist or not, to deny that it happened.”
Are they that old? I've seen some in pretty good condition still. Can't say that for Al Bore. He looks at least 95 millions years old.
Therefore every word in the Bible must be the literal Truth.
(Which I guess means the parables must be literal Truth, but calling them parables must therefore be a lie, or they are stories to illustrate a point, and therefore not the literal Truth, and we can call them parables, but that means even though they are in the Bible, they aren't the literal Truth, but everything in the Bible must be the literal Truth)...
Was the “Aurora Turtle” on a post?
Oh that’s OK I’ll figure it out when 0 coughs up his real history.
Another casualty of Global Warming?
Not so surprising really.
When I was a kid we went to a place on the eastern shore of lake Huron. We found fossil sharks teeth by the handfull there. I suspect my granny still has a shoebox full somewhere.
I also hear they found a “Built Ford Tough” billboard just behind the turtle shell. Damn factories.
Was the fossil found on top of a fence post?
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