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

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Fri Sep 23 16:17:00 2005
Message-ID: <9e.2e04c05c.3065bca6_at_aol.com>

Hola Mark, List,
 
Nice link of "carbonized petrified wood" from Ecuador, thank you...however,
it appears to me that the "carbonized" adjective in that particular URL refers
 to trees that were dried under a bed of fine warm volcanic ash, according to
 those authors, where some of the mineralization occuring in the
petrification process forming stable carbon minerials derived from the original organic
carbon in the organic matter. It doesn't sound like they are claiming that
the fine detail also shows evidence that the fossils were burned, in your use
of "charred" and "carbonized". On the contrary the authors seem to be
agreeing with the point I made: That the temperature couldn't have been too hot -
or the detail would have been lost - they quote 150 C as the maximum. Wood
doesn't burn at that temperature.
 
To try to bridge our gap, I'll agree that you could probably come up with
several examples of petrified wood where arguments have been made alleging
charring of the "burnt" variety. There are a couple of orders of magnitude more
of biomass of plant material than animal, though. The examples you will
probably dig up are from lava flows where several meters of inorganic volcanic
ash buries anerobically in near laboratory produced conditions, a perfect
insulating, thick disinfected layer of ash from which leaching of volcanic
minerials into the integral organic structures can grow minerals in the orientations
we can recognize as a fossil, long after the original mold has vanished.
 
If we can agree that these events are specialized cases, and that the
supposed KT impact was of quite a different variety scrambling all kinds of
unsterilized, non-uniform, matter, much like a variable garbage heap, we now have a
different situation where I don't believe anyone has actually show that burnt
fossils - if that sort of original burnt product even existed - can actually
form under these circumstances.
 
My motivation to respond was that you are shooting down marine organisms as
indicators of global and regional climate change by refusing to consider its
implications on the fauna of the region. In fact, it is the best we have.
I'll gladly give to you that it isn't "proof", and that certain researchers in
their enthusiasm think they can explain the entire world with a hammer, or
whatever tool they have become proficient and familiar using. But
chronostratigraphy is a very serious and developed science which provides indicators
that a comprehensive extinction theory must be consistent explaining as one of
the first things it does - if great changes are noticed. You might attribute
it to abrupt changes in nutrient availability - well, perhaps, but the Forams
are rather widespread across the world and when correlations indicating
water temperature are very consistent with many diverse theories, I must admit I
get amazed at the power of this sort climatic analysis.
 
On the other hand, you set the bar quite high, perhaps in joking, it is not
clear to me...You would demand a paleontologist show you burnt dinosaur bones
to back up his babblings derived from Forams before you would take him
seriously. I disagree. Perhaps I am a bit ignorant on this, but I am having
great difficulty imagining how dino bones would get nicely burnt and then
petrified with the upheaval of tsunamis, rocks and bb's, from the sky, storms,
winds, maybe fires, etc... It just sounds like a huge mess to me. I picked a
tree as it would be the easiest in my opinion to conserve charring marks if
anything could. I try to imagine how the bland tissue of a dinosaur could be
surgically removed and then bone charred, and that conserved in this scenario by
fossilization (especially considering the possible invasion of corrosive
salt water).
 
When we barbeque an animal, do we get burnt bones out of it? With all that
mean around it?
 
Now given the 65,000,000 years that have elapsed, the relative uncommoness
of macro-fossilization when not ocurring under perfect conditions, when
sediments move, etc., the relative infrequent finds of dino bones, I think you are
asking for a standard of proof that is too tall an order, though it would be
great if it could turn up. That may be what is being hunted in the article
on Cuba - which perhaps is the right distance from the alleged KT crater, to
get a partial burning...not to close, not too far...
 
Where I am going with all this is, while I don't disagree with your
arguments against the chronostratigraphists, any other proof so far from the boundary
event(s) is equally or more likely more inconclusive than the ideas gleaned
from analysis of the Foramifera and the implications of global climate change
that they indicate.
 
65,000,000 years ago, with modern science everything seems a our fingertips.
 That feeling quickly vanishes when one goes out into the field, the rubber
(shoes) meet the road (outcrops)and has to deal with a few ugly anachronistic
fragments of petrified rocks. Even the petrification process is not too
well understood for a given fossil...
 
That's why I give the paleontologists studying microfossil stratigraphy
their respect for the tools they offer and wonderful information they have
gleaned for us all. But that isn't carte blanche, and I agree that we need to look
at all surviving angles. For example, before finding that charred dino
bone, can you at least show me a 65,000,000 charred earth rock or meteorite from
the event? Not shocked quartz. Why would that be so hard to do if wood is
no problem?
 
Saludos, Doug
 
Mark Fe wrote:

>Hi Doug and List

>Actually, there are chared and carbonized stumps within flows. Simple
google
>search turn this up:
>http://www.internacional.edu.ec/publicaciones/arco_iris/001/english/magazine0
01b.htm
>A piece of burned bone which had been carbonized would leave a distinct
>trace fossil as opposed to a mineralized fossil.
 
Received on Fri 23 Sep 2005 04:16:38 PM PDT