Asteroid Did not kill Dinosaurs

By mixing the work of two scientists in different fields, there may be a solution to the dinosaur extinction not addressed , as far as I know. Robert Bakker says that the asteroid that impacted on the Yucatan peninsula did not kill off the dinos. There were several (6?) larger craters left from previous impacts around the world, that would have killed them off earlier. Bakker says , due to this fact, possibly a virus, or another factor contributed to their demise. Fred Hoyle, in association with another scientist (Chandra

Hi everybody !

I do apologize for my funny language. I'm a little Frenchie, I'm new at newsgroups... Has anybody advice ? :o) So, you mean that all these lethal viruses are a sweet little present from Martians ? Come on ! Back on Earth !

- First, Fred Hoyle doesn't solve the main problem : 'How was life created ?' He merely moves this great issue to another planet... So I think his theory isn't a response at all. (To my mind, the role of water polarization and mud structure have been underestimated.) - DNA isn't as complex as you say. I'd rather build DNA than a 747. - Viruses are specific : why would they kill all cephalopods but nautils, dinosaurs but birds, and only 50 percent of sea life ? I suppose there would have been at least surviving families : some humans are Black Death, Ebola, AIDS (etc.) tolerant !

I admit that the 'Dinosaur-Killer Asteroid theory' is not completely acceptable at this time... but the 'spread influenza' isn't credible more (I'm not categoric, but why begin by what's most improbable? )

May I suggest you read The Flamingo's Smile by S.J.Gould, he says that greenhouse effect would have sterilized male dinos !!? Oh poor !

Keep submitting such ideas, it's very int'resting. The truth is out there, I feel it's coming )

sadly this would not answer why the Pterosaurs, Mososaurs, Ichthyosaurs, Plesiosaurs, certain species of birds, many plankton types, LOTS of plants, and many reptiles ALSO went extinct at exactly the same time as the dinosaurs........

Bolides that hit in water would more likly kill more water forms than bolides that fall only on land. The K-T extinction event killed off a rather HUGE number of sea forms.....

-Betty Cunningham

GOOD GRIEF !! Another ''War of The Worlds'' scenario !! And besides as far as everyone knows BAKKER doesn't know his **** from a hole in the ground !!

I'm always amused at the fanatical fury Dr. Bakker apparently inspires in some folk. I prefer to keep my critiques of sometimes controversial scientists at an appropriate level: instead of attacking an individual with inane, invidious invectives, the best approach is to directly address the issue, the idea

I always wonder why people search for a single, primary cause for an extinction, especially the KT extinction. It is almost certain that an asteroid or comet impact had immense environmental impacts upon the Earth, and I would be surprised to definitivly learn that a single species was NOT brought to extinction by it. But even this impact is likely not responsible for the extinction of all those animals that died off. Other things were occuring too. The Deccan Traps were being spewed out, and I'm certain that this was a remarkable impact on local ecology, not to mention(at least) hemispheral ecology. Who knows, perhaps the mingling of many species did indeed cause viral plagues that wiped out some species. And what other changes were occuring at this time? Climatic shifts, geologic activity, biological interaction, asteroidal impacts....Rather than saying an asteroid did or did not cause the extinctions...or saying that a virus was the sole cause...and so on and so forth, isn't it more logical to conclude that all of these events had a cumulative effect? And perhaps there were other things going on as well.

In the end, not only Earth, but the entire solar system is a remarkably complex set of variables that are constantly interacting on many different levels, from the obvious to the grossly sublime. At some point, perhaps there is a 'breaking' point where they can cause obvious effects on Earth ecology. I won't pretend to try and list out these possible effects, or their causes. And I defintely won't pretend to say that this meeting of effects is the cause of the KT extinction. I'm simply curious as to why people look for a single event when there is so much going on!

Anyway, just some random thoughts to chew on....

Betty raises a very good point..... Maybe things were more complicated than just one object hitting the earth 65 mya.

In view of what we saw recently with the multiple impacts from the same comet on Jupiter and new evidence of multiple impacts on the Earth, has anyone proposed that there may have been other, deep water impacts from the same space debris that created the Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan? A series of impacts around the Earth would create much more devastation and faster climatic change than just one.

Mike Everhart Oceans of Kansas Paleonotology < http://www2.southwind.net/~mjever >

I'm not that familiar with microbiology but I thought that viruses can't be grown on a Petri dish and have to be cultured in tissues, etc. How do they justify that a virus can not only live on a rock or chunk of ice and survive re-entry temperatures would be specific enough to infect any Earth based life form?

Most of the answers to all general questions of this type are found in 'Our Place In The Cosmos' by Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramansinghe.Frictional heating caused by the impact of gas molecules could present a hazard for such microorganisms, except for 2 important ways, which prove the situation is favorable to survival.1. the flash heatings last for only about a second. 2. The flash occurs in gas of such low density there is insufficient oxygen for burning to occur. Dr Shirwan Al-Mufti at U of wales subjcted E Coli to temps of up to 700 degrees C, and then it was grown in a nutrient broth to demonstrate survival of the heat. Small particles from virus size at low end, to colonies of bacteria at upper end, descend quickly from top of troposphere to ground. In troposhere , temp falls with increasing height, encouraging vertical air movements that carry water vapour from surface regions to troposphere,. As the temp falls with height, water becomes supersaturated, but the water isn't usually so low that supersaturated water vapour condenses spontaneously into ice crystals. Ice needs something to condense around- a nucleus(a small particle in this case, not an atomic nucleus).Small particles falling from the stratosphere above into the troposhere, and in particular, microorganisms falling from above, would provide nuclei around which much larger ice crystals could form. Because larger ice crystals are less impeded by air resistance than the original small nuclei, they fall much faster. As they descend into the warmer air, the ice crystals melt, and either fall to ground as rain , or only partially evaporate, with smaller droplets suspended as haze in the air

So, microorganisms are carried to ground inside ice crystals and water droplets. In trickles and streams and ground water, and evaporation, they reach every nook and cranny of the planet. JB Cooper

Well, they can't survive. Long chain carbon molecules break down at just a couple hundred degrees C and meteorites get glowing hot in re-entry. This is a 'joke thread' that somebody has posted. It's intended to get everybody all rankled. Bakker's theories do have some merit, but the rest is all a joke.

There... I went and spoiled it for everybody.

Tom A web page for amateurs by an amateur... <http://www.mindspring.com/~sminstruments/fossils/>

*ahem* I must vehemently disagree with you. Since the content of your post is pretty much a waste of bandwidth, I don't have much to refute the claim, aside from noting that he appears to have no difficulty excreting, and has never, to my knowledge, attempted a dig within his own ****.

HollowMan tUaaba3baZcacaaaabaa76gwFSNLwjriebcscc38faHa2f6jGb5FHaaP00mCcm#daGhhmyej

I think the dinosaurs ate like sheep and goats devouring all plants including the roots and the planet couldn't recover, so the herbivores died off and the carnivores ate each other leaving us with the smaller dinosaurs of today.

hcg88b- I strongly disagree. Bakker IS credible!! So, if I were you I'd what what I say.

FiloFrAk makes an excellent point about the K-T extinction. A virus or other pathogen may spread quickly but it doesn NOT explain why other species went extinct. A virus can't jump species that quickly!! Remember, this happened in a reletively short period of time...as in a year or more. Besides more evidence points to an Meteor or Asteroid impact. Think about the pencil-thin layer of irridium found between Tertiary and Cretacous rock layers. That is the K-T Extinction. Irridium is rare on Earth but abundant in meteors.

hcg88b- If you're going to make a comment that disagrees with someone, please watch what you say and language.

dagger29 wrote:

I always wonder why people search for a single, primary cause for an extinction, especially the KT extinction. It is almost certain that an asteroid or comet impact had immense environmental impacts upon the Earth, and I would be surprised to definitivly learn that a single species was NOT brought to extinction by it. But even this impact is likely not responsible for the extinction of all those animals that died off. Other things were occuring too. The Deccan Traps were being spewed out, and I'm certain that this was a remarkable impact on local ecology, not to mention(at least) hemispheral ecology. Who knows, perhaps the mingling of many species did indeed cause viral plagues that wiped out some species. And what other changes were occuring at this time? Climatic shifts, geologic activity, biological interaction, asteroidal impacts....Rather than saying an asteroid did or did not cause the extinctions...or saying that a virus was the sole cause...and so on and so forth, isn't it more logical to conclude that all of these events had a cumulative effect? And perhaps there were other things going on as well.

In the end, not only Earth, but the entire solar system is a remarkably complex set of variables that are constantly interacting on many different levels, from the obvious to the grossly sublime. At some point, perhaps there is a 'breaking' point where they can cause obvious effects on Earth ecology. I won't pretend to try and list out these possible effects, or their causes. And I defintely won't pretend to say that this meeting of effects is the cause of the KT extinction. I'm simply curious as to why people look for a single event when there is so much going on!

Anyway, just some random thoughts to chew on....

That's true. People need to consider more than one variable instead of just one event. Perhaps, all mentioned hypotheses and theories happened at some point leading to the demise of more than half of all species going extinct. You make an excellent point, Dagger29. Keep it up....