Hi Doug
I did set the bar high, because some of the researchers actually believe the
event was so powerful, the ozone layer itself would have been blasted away
1000 times over (their own words when challenged on the subject. Without
ozone at all, there would be very little life period being totally
unprotected from radiation which got past the magnetic field around earth.
Having said that, I did say that a study of forams associated with a marine
reptile would give very good evidence and possibly supply leads that people
are (non-paleontologists) scrambling to find to back up their own work in
physics and such about the K-T event.
But, to date, they have not and they assume, that their calculations prove
all and are supported by forams, when in fact, their calculations would have
wiped the earth clean of forams and most other life that didn't require
sunlight to live.
Thats the arguement in a nutshell.
Good talk were having here, should we take it off list though?
Mark
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: <meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 4:16 PM
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] Fossils Offer Support for
Meteor'sRoleinDinosaurExtinc...
Hola Mark, List,
Nice link of "carbonized petrified wood" from Ecuador, thank
you...however,
it appears to me that the "carbonized" adjective in that particular URL
refers
to trees that were dried under a bed of fine warm volcanic ash, according
to
those authors, where some of the mineralization occuring in the
petrification process forming stable carbon minerials derived from the
original organic
carbon in the organic matter. It doesn't sound like they are claiming
that
the fine detail also shows evidence that the fossils were burned, in your
use
of "charred" and "carbonized". On the contrary the authors seem to be
agreeing with the point I made: That the temperature couldn't have been
too hot -
or the detail would have been lost - they quote 150 C as the maximum.
Wood
doesn't burn at that temperature.
To try to bridge our gap, I'll agree that you could probably come up with
several examples of petrified wood where arguments have been made alleging
charring of the "burnt" variety. There are a couple of orders of
magnitude more
of biomass of plant material than animal, though. The examples you will
probably dig up are from lava flows where several meters of inorganic
volcanic
ash buries anerobically in near laboratory produced conditions, a perfect
insulating, thick disinfected layer of ash from which leaching of
volcanic
minerials into the integral organic structures can grow minerals in the
orientations
we can recognize as a fossil, long after the original mold has vanished.
If we can agree that these events are specialized cases, and that the
supposed KT impact was of quite a different variety scrambling all kinds
of
unsterilized, non-uniform, matter, much like a variable garbage heap, we
now have a
different situation where I don't believe anyone has actually show that
burnt
fossils - if that sort of original burnt product even existed - can
actually
form under these circumstances.
My motivation to respond was that you are shooting down marine organisms
as
indicators of global and regional climate change by refusing to consider
its
implications on the fauna of the region. In fact, it is the best we
have.
I'll gladly give to you that it isn't "proof", and that certain
researchers in
their enthusiasm think they can explain the entire world with a hammer,
or
whatever tool they have become proficient and familiar using. But
chronostratigraphy is a very serious and developed science which provides
indicators
that a comprehensive extinction theory must be consistent explaining as
one of
the first things it does - if great changes are noticed. You might
attribute
it to abrupt changes in nutrient availability - well, perhaps, but the
Forams
are rather widespread across the world and when correlations indicating
water temperature are very consistent with many diverse theories, I must
admit I
get amazed at the power of this sort climatic analysis.
On the other hand, you set the bar quite high, perhaps in joking, it is
not
clear to me...You would demand a paleontologist show you burnt dinosaur
bones
to back up his babblings derived from Forams before you would take him
seriously. I disagree. Perhaps I am a bit ignorant on this, but I am
having
great difficulty imagining how dino bones would get nicely burnt and then
petrified with the upheaval of tsunamis, rocks and bb's, from the sky,
storms,
winds, maybe fires, etc... It just sounds like a huge mess to me. I
picked a
tree as it would be the easiest in my opinion to conserve charring marks
if
anything could. I try to imagine how the bland tissue of a dinosaur
could be
surgically removed and then bone charred, and that conserved in this
scenario by
fossilization (especially considering the possible invasion of corrosive
salt water).
When we barbeque an animal, do we get burnt bones out of it? With all
that
mean around it?
Now given the 65,000,000 years that have elapsed, the relative uncommoness
of macro-fossilization when not ocurring under perfect conditions, when
sediments move, etc., the relative infrequent finds of dino bones, I think
you are
asking for a standard of proof that is too tall an order, though it would
be
great if it could turn up. That may be what is being hunted in the
article
on Cuba - which perhaps is the right distance from the alleged KT crater,
to
get a partial burning...not to close, not too far...
Where I am going with all this is, while I don't disagree with your
arguments against the chronostratigraphists, any other proof so far from
the boundary
event(s) is equally or more likely more inconclusive than the ideas
gleaned
from analysis of the Foramifera and the implications of global climate
change
that they indicate.
65,000,000 years ago, with modern science everything seems a our
fingertips.
That feeling quickly vanishes when one goes out into the field, the
rubber
(shoes) meet the road (outcrops)and has to deal with a few ugly
anachronistic
fragments of petrified rocks. Even the petrification process is not too
well understood for a given fossil...
That's why I give the paleontologists studying microfossil stratigraphy
their respect for the tools they offer and wonderful information they
have
gleaned for us all. But that isn't carte blanche, and I agree that we
need to look
at all surviving angles. For example, before finding that charred dino
bone, can you at least show me a 65,000,000 charred earth rock or
meteorite from
the event? Not shocked quartz. Why would that be so hard to do if wood
is
no problem?
Saludos, Doug
Mark Fe wrote:
Hi Doug and List
Actually, there are chared and carbonized stumps within flows. Simple
google
search turn this up:
http://www.internacional.edu.ec/publicaciones/arco_iris/001/english/magazine0
01b.htm
A piece of burned bone which had been carbonized would leave a distinct
trace fossil as opposed to a mineralized fossil.
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