Massive new dinosaur might be the largest creature to ever roam Earth:
The remains of the unnamed dinosaur were first discovered in 2012 in Neuquén Province of northwest Patagonia, but have still not been fully excavated.
[...] "Given the measurements of the new skeleton, it looks likely that this is a contender for one of the largest, if not the largest, sauropods that have ever been found," Paul Barrett, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London who was not involved in the study, told Live Science.
[...] "The place of the finding is very hard to access, so the logistics is pretty complicated," lead study author Alejandro Otero, a paleontologist at La Plata Museum in Argentina, told Live Science. "But we expect to return there after the pandemic situation."
The remains themselves date to about 98 million years ago, meaning the creature lived during the Cretaceous period.
[...] Right now, the researchers can't say how large the new titanosaur was, given that the long limb bones used to make such estimates, such as the humerus and femur, have not yet been excavated. However, analyses of the bones that have been found — including 24 vertebrae of the tail and parts of the pelvic and pectoral girdle — show that it was most likely the largest of the titanosaurs.
[...] "It is a huge dinosaur, but we expect to find much more of the skeleton in future field trips, so we'll have the possibility to address with confidence how big it really was," Otero said.
Journal Reference:
Alejandro Otero, José L. Carballido, Leonardo Salgado et al. Report of a giant titanosaur sauropod from the Upper Cretaceous of Neuquén Province, Argentina, Cretaceous Research (DOI: 10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104754)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:01AM
Wot? Eds accept this, over the most intriguing story about the discovery of the perfect dinosaur asshole, which strangely resembled the Runaway1956? And they say there is no bias at SN? Oh, the huge Patagoniatitanousaurs asshole of rebuke?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Arik on Friday January 22 2021, @08:20AM (1 child)
Like a 20' tall chicken. Don't think he won't eat you.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @02:17PM
Sorry you got downmodded. Great example of what's wrong with the mod system. That 1 person has the power to move your lighthearted levity below the default reading threshold is stupid. That nobody else fixed it is further proof- mod system is stupid. It isn't designed or implemented with an understanding of human psychology (start with excess competitive spirit, toss in some triggered anger...).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @10:18AM (29 children)
It wouldn't be possible for such creatures to exist in the current Earth's atmosphere. It must have been much thicker in the past. Moving was like moving through a fluid with a density 2/3 of liquid water.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday January 22 2021, @11:16AM (28 children)
Why do you think so? While atmospheric pressure has likely fluctuated in the past, a density of 2/3 of liquid water (at atmospheric pressure, I presume) is orders of magnitude off of what might have realistically been the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:37PM (26 children)
The terrestrial animals of the Mesozoic era - the dinosaurs - grew much larger and taller than what is physically possible for modern terrestrial animals.
Even though present reptiles are not capable of achieving true flight, during the Mesozoic the pterosaurs were reptiles that were not only capable of flight but actually grew to become the largest flying animals of all time.
During the Mesozoic era, there was no ice at the Polar Regions. Nor was there any ice or snow on the highest mountain peaks. During the Mesozoic era, the temperature was nearly the same over the entire Earth.
No matter if dinosaurs walked on two legs or four, nearly all dinosaurs had the same unique shape of having a strong tail and much stronger rear legs than fore legs.
Feathered dinosaurs have long flight feathers on their fore limbs and even on their rear legs despite appearing to be too large to fly by modern standards.
Why does water cover 70% of the Earth's surface when it is almost impossible to find water on any of the other planets or moons of our solar system?
What is the mechanism that heats the interior of the planets and moons?
Our atmosphere contains only a trace amount of carbon dioxide even though carbon dioxide emissions make up one fourth to one third of the worldwide volcanic gases released into the atmosphere. How do we account for the missing carbon dioxide gas?
How do we account for the massive carbon deposits millions of years before the start of the Mesozoic era and at the end of the Mesozoic era, as noted by early paleontologists in the naming of these periods: Carboniferous period 360 - 290 mya meaning carbon or coal, and Cretaceous period 140 - 65 mya, meaning chalk as in limestone chalk.
The two planets closest to the Earth, Venus and Mars, have similar atmospheres that consists primary of carbon dioxide: about 96% carbon dioxide and 3% nitrogen. Yet Earth's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen and oxygen, 78% and 20% respectfully. Why should the Earth's atmosphere be so different from the other terrestrial planets?
https://dinosaurtheory.com/ [dinosaurtheory.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @01:29PM (10 children)
Our current atmosphere has a mass (lifting capacity) of about 1kg per m3. Animal flesh has on the close order of 1000kg per m3.
Even if you tripled the air pressure (and hence the density) and increased the CO2 to 10,000ppm that lifting capacity would still be less than a half of a percent of the mass. Higher air density would help the fliers (a lot) but would do nothing for the land based giants except possibly to make it easier for them to breathe in enough oxygen.
Fantasies of an atmosphere 1/3 the density of water are ridiculous. That's 5 times the atmospheric pressure on Venus.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @02:50PM (9 children)
> Fantasies of an atmosphere 1/3 the density of water are ridiculous. That's 5 times the atmospheric pressure on Venus.
Why ridiculous? The atmosphere must have been 320x thicker than today. Please explain how life would *not* pull massive amounts of CO2 and N2 from the air then fix the components to heavier than air compounds?
Earth's atmosphere started like that of Venus and Mars: 96.5% CO2 and 3.5% N2. On earth almost all that CO2 has been trapped in limestone, dolemite, life, coal, and oil. That thinned the atmosphere by ~30x. At the same time about 95% of the nitrogen was fixed into ammonia and various organics further thinning it another 10x.
Atmosphere went from 1500e18 kg to 5e18 kg. And Earths mass increased negligibly about 0.02% from 6e24 kg.
There you go, a 300x thinner atmosphere today vs earlier.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 22 2021, @04:57PM (8 children)
Being thick (thermodynamics is something of a blind spot). Why does CO2 lead to so much higher density?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @05:08PM (5 children)
It has nothing to due with CO2 specifically, it is just having more gas molecules in the atmosphere increasing the pressure.
Earth started out like Mars and Venus with an atmosphere of 96.5% CO2 then it was nearly all put into solid and liquid form by life. Now the atmosphere is only ~.04% CO2. Same with nitrogen fixation, which took the second biggest component of the atmosphere and put it into solid and liquid form.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 22 2021, @06:15PM (2 children)
Still being thick then! Why more density? Did the early atmosphere extend to greater height (and if so why)? Or are you arguing something about partial pressure? I am being completely thick so please excuse stupid questions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:32PM
If you pump significantly more gas into the atmosphere it will extend to a greater height and the pressure (density) will be higher at the surface due to more air above pushing down. If you remove gas from the atmosphere there is less mass pushing down and the pressure (density) will be lower at the surface.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_pressure [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:40PM
https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/air-temperature-pressure-density-d_771.html [engineeringtoolbox.com]
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Friday January 22 2021, @06:21PM (1 child)
Just to follow up, based on some naive ideal gas model:
Pressure * Volume = const * number of molecules * Temperature i.e. PV=nRT where R is a constant.
Rearranging
P = RT*(n/V)
Temperature is roughly the same, as far as I am aware, give or take a few % relative to absolute 0. So you are claiming that gas pressure was much higher. Where does the excess pressure come from? If the atmosphere is much higher, then the column density gets bigger i.e. the gas at ground level must support much more weight => more pressure => more density. Is this the argument?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:34PM
From the ~1,495 quintrillion kg of CO2 and N2 that used to be in the atmosphere but is no longer. Now those atoms are locked up at the surface as part of living things, limestone, dolemite, hydrocarbons, ammonia, etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:07PM (1 child)
It doesn't.
Molecular masses.
O2 = 32
N2 = 28
CO2 = 44.
It's not that big an increase, about 30% if you had an entirely CO2 atmosphere. Since we have less than 1% CO2, and have had for ~3 billion years, the effect is negligible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:37PM
Huh? The CO2 and N2 is being removed from the air and fixed into various solids and liquids at the surface. The total mass of the atmosphere has been reduced by ~300x.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @01:48PM (8 children)
Birds are dinosaurs in all but name, and most of them can fly. Dinosaurs, and pterosaurs, had more in common with birds than with today's reptiles.
They didn't fly (except the ones that became birds). They used them to control their temperature, to keep their skin clean, or for their appearance.
There is water on every planet or large moon except Mercury and Io (and there might even be a little bit on them). There is no water on the surface of Venus, of course, due to the temperature, but there is some in the atmosphere; about 1/3 as much (by mass, not by concentration) as in Earth's atmosphere. Most of the moons in the outer solar system are primarily water. The only moons that don't have water are the ones that are basically just asteroids, plus Io because Io is super weird. Even the Earth's moon has trace amounts of water.
Heat from gravitational collapse plus radioactive decay. Depending on the specific planet or moon in question, tidal heating is also a factor.
Photosynthetic life changed it into coal and oil. We are doing our best to change it all back.
There was a lot of photosynthetic life back then. See the previous question. Good thing, too. See the last question.
Because not all planets are the same. Venus is similar to Earth, but it's not the same. Mars is quite different because it is much smaller. Neither of those planets has a magnetic field, Venus because it barely rotates and Mars because it is too small and its core has cooled. This has a tremendous effect on the atmospheres of these planets. Also note that by mass, Venus has four times as much nitrogen in its atmosphere as Earth does. It is just that it has so much more carbon dioxide. A better question would be why Earth has so little CO2. The answer to that is that most of it is in the mantle, which is why volcanoes emit it. Studies of volcanic emissions and geology imply that there is enough CO2 in Earth's mantle, if it were all released, to form a CO2 atmosphere twice as thick as Venus's. CO2 is also removed by weathering (reacting with surface rocks and water to form carbonates) and, as mentioned, by life. The oxygen, of course, is also produced by life. If not for photosynthesis, all that oxygen would be CO2, and Earth would be a slightly cooler version of Venus.
Not going to bother reading this, I assume it's some creationist horseshit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @02:55PM (6 children)
> Photosynthetic life changed it into coal and oil.
Yes, have you considered what happens to the thickness of the atmosphere when you remove most of the two main components?
And what moon is mostly water?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:06PM (5 children)
It gets thinner? Now you know why Earth's atmosphere is thinner than Venus's. But most of the "missing" CO2 (relative to Venus, anyway) is in the mantle.
All the large moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus, except for Io, are at least 40% water by mass, and more by volume. Tethys has probably the most water by mass, being something like 95% water. Titan sees your water and raises a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere. Triton and all the well-studied Kuiper Belt objects, including Pluto and its large moons, may have slightly less water proportionally, but only because it's cold enough for them to also have large amounts of ammonia and even solid nitrogen. They are still all 25-30% water or more, far more water than is found on Earth. If you insist on liquid water, then you'll have to restrict yourself to Europa, Enceladus, and Triton... as far as we know for sure. But Pluto and most of the large moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are good candidates. Pluto is probably the most likely, followed by Callisto.
Many of the medium-size moons also have large amounts of water, but there are too many of them to list and it's unlikely that any of them have liquid water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:42PM
Yes, in the past it was much thicker. This provided the buoyancy required for the giant dinosaurs to survive.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @10:27PM (3 children)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tethys_%28moon%29 [wikipedia.org]
So they are just assuming it is not hollow or something. Also that is yet another moon with that "deathstar dimple" that looks like what you see when you crack a hard boiled egg.
What is the explanation for these dimples? Was the object formerly liquid with a shell and an air bubble got trapped underneath, then the shell was removed somehow?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @02:58AM
You figured it out! Aghartha is in there!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @02:05PM (1 child)
Couldn't it just be a large & old impact crater?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @08:39PM
Probably a massive electrical discharge. OH NOES! It's the Electric Universe wackos!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:14PM
That's debatable. I favor Thomas Gold's theory of abiogenic origin for most of the coal, gas, and oil. In any case, most of the carbon actually gets laid down as limestone by shellfish. They deposit about 1% of the carbon in the biosphere per century. If it wasn't for volcanoes and oil seeps replacing it life would go extinct in about 10,000 years.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday January 22 2021, @10:20PM (4 children)
I'm given to understand that organisms capable of breaking down wood in a reasonable amount of time didn't exist during this period. Imagine a forest floor where wood never breaks down. You'd have caves of vintage wood formed by trees that collapsed due to old age. It would be a dense warren of dangerous logs. The deeper caves would eventually collapse and it built up what we now have as coal seems. The only reason there's less carbon around now is because it was fixed in such ways. There may not have been anything unusual going on with the sea creatures--just a matter of time, and while something might eat shells it doesn't eat them fast enough. All you need for a big build-up is for the thing that deposits to run faster than the thing that removes--for millions of years.
We should never see coal deposits quite like that again, although I'm given to understand there are still places where peat forms, just more slowly. The first fungi and termites must have had quite a feast. I'm given to understand it's the fungi that do most of the decomposition and help modern forests to be more of a carbon cycle than a carbon sink.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @05:17AM (3 children)
> The geological evidence is consistent with and lends support to the physiological and aerodynamic arguments (1) that the atmospheric pressure was definitely higher in the age of dinosaurs than it is today. If you reject this argument and if you prefer to believe that the atmosphere was at 1 bar throughout Earth’s history, how do you explain where the measured 55–70 bar of CO2 in limestone and other carbonates came from?
http://pubsapp.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/30/i12/html/12learn.html? [acs.org]
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday January 24 2021, @05:52AM (2 children)
How do you explain the pressure in a sparkling wine bottle? Certainly not based on atmospheric pressure. Of course you're talking about much higher pressure, but it sounds like you're also talking about deposits that were laid down in strata and... there's your pressure. The initial pocket of CO2 might have been at a lower pressure in the rocks, but as they were compressed and solidified, you could end up with a pocket of CO2 gas in there at much higher pressure.
This isn't my field, and you're just an AC. I welcome anybody who's willing to refute my theory with something else.
As for their claim that the flying creatures couldn't fly, I also have to take exception with that for a few reasons. While it may not have been possible for a pterosaur to take off from flat ground, that might not have been necessary. The could have lived in mountainous areas with few predators. Then all they'd have to do is walk up hill and catch the breeze like a modern hang-glider.
It's even possible that they didn't fly daily--but spent most of their time grazing in safe areas. They could have used the wings only for migration, catching seasonal winds that allowed them to glide to fresh fields. The wings might have even been part of a courtship ritual, like peacock feathers except that instead of "look how pretty I am", it was "look what a badass hang-glider bird I am". Of course nobody was there, so it's impossible to know 100%, but yet again I'm unconvinced of the dense atmosphere theory.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:28AM (1 child)
The quote is saying that if all the CO2 was released from limestone, etc then the atmosphere would be 95% CO2 and ~70x thicker. Basically matching venus.
What you need to explain is where all that CO2 came from originally if not the atmosphere.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Sunday January 24 2021, @07:31PM
Carbonaceous chondrites [wikipedia.org] are the most common asteroids in the solar system and likely correlate to the composition of the early solar system. The carbon is obviously not gaseous. A little more googling revealed that a lot of it is amino acids and other organic (carbon containing) molecules, which would be helpful for early life.
Limestone is CaCO3, not CO2, so you don't "release CO2 from limestone" unless you react it somehow. Lots of sea creatures take organic molecules and calcium, and use them to build shells which ultimately became limestone.
In other words, there's no need to pass through a stage where the atmosphere is full of CO2 in order to build up limestone deposits. Organisms + organics + minerals = shells = limestone.
Sorry, the high-pressure theory is still not looking very good.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 24 2021, @01:57PM
Birds are dinosaurs. They dominated because their lungs allowed them to thrive in the low-oxygen atmosphere. https://www.publicradioeast.org/post/emma-schachner-how-did-dinosaurs-lungs-help-them-dominate-earth-so-long [publicradioeast.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2021, @06:40AM
Obviously, the GP is a anachronism with a brain the size of a walnut. This is one of the more stupid assertions ever, on SN, up there with khallow's "free market" and TMB's voter fraud. Really stupid assertations of not real stuff? Atmospheric pressure? Are you serious, or just trying to support your mama, so she does not boot you out of the basement, from which, given the lack of atmospheric density, you would fly for quite some miles, yes? And still remain a virgin, both sexually and to science.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @10:39AM
98 million years old is not new.
(Score: 1) by isocelated on Friday January 22 2021, @12:24PM
Six year old me finds this article fascinating.
(Grownup me also finds it to be pretty cool.)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:53PM (1 child)
There are millions of lard-assed Americans roaming the Earth right now, if you define roaming as riding a mobility scooter.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @02:26PM
You're right- there goes a Michael Moore now!