[meteorite-list] Fossils Offer Support for Meteor's RoleinDinosaur Extinc...

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Sep 23 01:28:02 2005
Message-ID: <129.65eb9ee4.3064ec56_at_aol.com>

Mark Fe wrote:
>Lack of a fossil means nothing.
>A charred bone fossil will.
 
>Mark Fe "I've only driven through Missouri, but show me anyway"

Hola Mark, List,
 
64.8 - 65.3 million years later and you expect to find a charred dinosaur
bone? Either the bone gets burnt or it fossilizes...and fossilizing is very
infrequent in the big scheme of things or everyone would have a dinosaur
skeleton buried in their cellar...I think it would be asking to much to get an
animal fossil of something that was burnt - would seem to me that whatever was
burnt would loose its integrity and no longer have the ability to fossilize
very easily at all...Can you show me a fossilized piece of burnt petrified wood
... ? :) Or was that just a fragment of petrified wood and who knows why it
wasn't twice as big...
 
With respect to the Forams, the theory is simple. Foramifera are plentiful
in sediments containing even no macro-fossils as is too typical in the KT
sediments. Changes species of 'Forams' are indicators of climatic change in the
opinion of most paleontologists. Now the fossil record shows that during
that time period so long ago, many species of land animals simply vanished
geologically abruptly, though how abruptly is still an open question for some: Is
it 500,000 years or 500 years being the basic question. And the key
assumption for Missourian's palate is if all but proving a big climate change (read:
Foram change) in conjunction with a huge iridium spike wasn't a shock enough
to blow away larger land animals.
 
Similar changes in microscopic creatures earmark other great dyings. In the
case of KT, for every 20 different species of Forams, only about 6 remained.
 The black box that ties the dinosaur extinction is, if we are sure the
climate changed abruptly as:
1. this is reflected in a sudden change in Forams...because only the hot
water species survived...or cold water species survived in a certain area of
study we have an incredibly nice predictor of climate (temperature) change. Now
furthermore, we can correlate that change, ie, dying, with a spike of
Iridium!
 
OK, you're from Missouri...No problem, a very nice place (Isn't their motto,
"Missouri is for Virginians?" Or was it "Show me Virginia"?, or "Missouri
is for Lovers?" I get them all mixed up. But I think the paleontologists are
on to something when they turn up those wonderful clues to what happened
that fateful date of January 1, 64,997,995 B.C. A person who measures dinosaur
bones and is typically a good prehistoric taxonomist to describe new species,
is unlikely to find a bone with a label 64,997,996 BC. I'm all eyes for new
evidence, but I think the Foram folk who are the experts in
chronoestratigraphy are much more likely to deconvolute as best as any dino only
paleontologist , after all they possibly like forams nbecause the dinos didn't give up any
smoking guns, which is worse than looking for a grain of sand on a beach
with 65,000,000 more grains... and it is not like these experts are not all very
interest paleontologists at heart and that many of the Foram folk of course
are dino experts as well as can be!
 
Three cheers for the efforts of the Foram folk ... though not loud enough
cheer to give them big heads about it...the big head won't happen until the next
 Nobel Prize is awarded on the subject...and I haven't seen any work in the
field yet coming near that yet...but who knows what they might dig up...would
you take an ammonite that looked like a jigsaw puzzle with half of the pieces
gone and a few spherules rolling around in it? Ammonites can look like
j8igsaw puzzles...btw:-)
Saludos, Doug
PS :Lack of a fossil means something, though it proves decisively nothing.
Lucky scientists can waive the "beyond a reasonable doubt" clause of the
Constitution when they publish and speak of thingsbeing consistent or not with
the record...
 
Received on Fri 23 Sep 2005 01:27:50 AM PDT