Tag: #FOWC

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E is for Extinction

Cartoon by Bizarro.

The pop cultural perspective on extinction is filled with visions of failure. The extinction of the dinosaurs is frequently viewed through this lens. But consider the lengthy reign of dinosaurs on Earth. Dinosaurs spent more than 160 million years ruling Earth’s terrestrial ecosystems. And technically, when you consider those modern dinosaurs flying around today, it means that dinosaurs have been around for more than 230 million years.

Kristi Curry Rogers, “Dinosaurs.”

Dinosaurs are often used as the definition of old, dead, extinct. Blackberries are now dinosaurs. Baby Boomers are dinosaurs with modern devices. The moniker is somewhat unfair. After all, dinosaurs did spread and thrive across the globe longer than any other type of creature. Fish lasted for about 60 million years in the “Age of Fish,” and mammals have also only been around about 65 million years. Dinos are extinct, but it took a rather dramatic way to take them out. (Well, technically crocodiles have been around since the dinosaurs, so maybe…)

Still, for what it’s worth, before we get overwrought about dinosaurs disappearing and the horror of species vanishing, we should get straight how extinction actually works.

Extinction causes from Firesafe Council.

Two Flavors of Extinction

First off, there are two kinds of extinction:

  • Background Extinction
  • Mass Extinction

Species go extinct all the time, and they always have. Background extinction refers to a one-off event, where a species dies off because it can’t adapt to the existing conditions. They lose their habitat or food source. Predators adapt more quickly than they do. Climate change has occurred countless times across the earth, multiple ice ages and warm ups and volcanoes spewing sulfur and CO2, plants gobbling it up. Every time there is a significant climate change, species go extinct–we’ve already had two Ice Ages in human history.

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C is for Clade

Dinosaur clade with timeframe, graphic from Fossil Wiki.

It’s all about the family trees. Today’s dinosaur-themed post is about how the dinosaur world is organized.

I know some of you are thinking, geez, don’t you know the names of any dinosaurs? Why isn’t A to Z going to be about Ankylosaurus to Zupaysaurus? I will have a few posts dedicated to specific dinosaurs, especially my favorites. But you can look up tons of dinosaur lists A to Z. There are kid’s alphabet books that do that. I promised to give you “all about dinosaurs,” not all about 26 dinosaurs. We need to round out this paleontological survey a bit more in order to achieve that goal.

How paleontologists organize the dinosaurs is quite important because it helps us understand how dinosaurs did what they did. As I mentioned in post “A,” the ankle bone structures differing from those of crocodiles urged scientists to think about why, and why was because dinosaurs stood upright. Hip-bone differentiation helped identify the two big groups — wait until letter “H”! And then… the birds. But we’ll get to that.

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B is for Big

Brachiosaurus head at the Am Museum of Natural History. Photo from Am Museum.

Holy cow! Or, maybe I should say Holy Brachiosaurus … or Holy Argentinasaurus…. or Holy Breviparopus….

These dudes got big!

In today’s dinosaur B-themed post, I’m going to share a little bit (and it’s already three days late and I haven’t much time, so not too much) on what, how, and why about these big-a@@ed creatures.

How Big Was Big?

Think almost half the length of a football field (American or European). The longest and largest dinosaur where much of the skeleton was discovered is either Argentinosaurus huinculensis or Patagotitan mayorum. Both of them were in a group labeled “Titanosaurs” and both were identified from bones discovered in — yep — Argentina. They ranged in length from 30 to 40 meters… about 45 yards and may have weighed around 80 tons.

As soon as you get measurements, of course, you start wondering, well, how much is that? Football fields are handy just because many people have seen them. For reference, a 757 aircraft weighs around 100 tons and is about 40 m, so visualize a living, stalking creature that looks like a giant airplane. Walking around on a football field, waving its intensely long neck around and wondering where all the veggies went. Forty meters is also the world record (officially Guinness WR) for flinging a Frisbee, so imagine throwing a Frisbee as long as a dinosaur!

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