Science
Related: About this forumDinosaurs were surrounded by constant fires
Dinosaurs once ruled the Earth but now it appears they ruled in Hell. Ancient charcoal deposits suggest wildfires ran rampant throughout the Cretaceous period, meaning dinosaurs had to spend 80 million years looking out for the next inferno.
So just why was the Cretaceous so fiery? According to researchers from London's Royal Holloway University and Chicago's Field Museum, there were two major reasons. First, the greenhouse effect was actually stronger back then than it is today, and this mean global temperatures were hotter. In such a world, random lightning strikes were much more likely to start fires than they are now. It also didn't help that there was actually more oxygen in the atmosphere in the Cretaceous than there is now, and that made the air itself more combustible.
Unlike today, where you generally need drought conditions to take hold before wildfires become a serious problem, the Cretaceous which lasted from about 145 to 65 million years ago was hot enough and had high enough oxygen levels that even very moist plants could easily burn. As Royal Holloway Professor Andrew C. Scott explains, these constant fires would have wrought havoc on the Cretaceous environment, "not only destroying the vegetation, but also exacerbating run-off and erosion and promoting subsequent flooding following storms."
The researchers were able to track the role of ancient fire through charcoal deposits in the fossil record. These signs of ancient fires are practically omnipresent in Cretaceous dinosaur deposits. Exactly how these fires would have affected the behavior of the dinosaurs is still an open question, but I think we do now know one thing for certain - Terra Nova would have been way more enjoyable if everything kept randomly catching on fire.
http://io9.com/5900889/dinosaurs-were-surrounded-by-constant-fires
flamingdem
(39,321 posts)into dinosaurs. Jurassic Park was secret training.
dipsydoodle
(42,239 posts)Just a matter of what.
flamingdem
(39,321 posts)Giant brains in vats come to mind
Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)KansDem
(28,498 posts)Perhaps they were careless...
rbixby
(1,140 posts)Apparently they constant caused fires, hence 'fire breathing dragon'. At least according to one crazed evolution denier.
Damn, I wish I could find that video.....anyone, anyone?
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)Thor_MN
(11,843 posts)Probably tasted like chicken.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Back then (290mya) atmospheric oxygen was at a whopping 35% and there is fossil evidence suggesting that all plants back then, even the ones in the coal swamps, were adapted to regular fires that had to be explosive. Conifers evolved during this period, which is why they are so fire-resistant.
A common hypothesis on why the oxygen level got so high during the Carboniferous is because fungi had not evolved enzymes for digesting the lignin in wood. Despite the stereotypical images of coal swamps this was a very cool, dry "ice-house" world similar to our own. The great coal deposits were coastal tropical lowlands that were flooded when an interglacial raised sea levels.
ThoughtCriminal
(14,049 posts)Constant "Fires"
n2doc
(47,953 posts)Motown_Johnny
(22,308 posts)for those fires.
This article seems slanted just to try and make it more interesting.