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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: 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.