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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: 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.
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(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.
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