This text is an intellectual property of Vinicio Coletti, Rome, Italy. |
Around 65 million years ago Earth was dominated by
reptiles. Dinosaurs of many different species walked on the soil, while
others lived into water or flew through the sky.
However, most species lived on the Earth's surface and there were herbivores
as well as carnivores. This variety of animals clearly indicates that
dinosaurs have been a very successful thread in the evolution of species.
Dinosaurs suddenly disappeared 65 million years ago and scientists are still
looking for the reason of this evolutionary disaster.
Most popular theory is about a big asteroid
collision with our planet. Nowadays astronomers are studying the so
called NEO (Near Earth Orbit) objects and many of them can produce
a global catastrophe in the unfortunate case of a collision.
The impact would produce a huge amount of heath, equivalent to thousands
of very powerful thermonuclear bombs, and terrible winds. If the sea
would be hit, gigantic waves would destroy life from all coast regions.
But the main impact would be on the short and mid term weather: dust (and
perhaps also water vapor) would partially shield sunlight. As a result,
climate would change dramatically all over the world. Animals living on
the surface would suffer more than those living into the sea or underground.
That's exactly what scientists think to have happened to poor dinosaurs.
A huge meteor crater in Mexico as well as the aboundance of iridium in
the geological layers formed in that period, are normally considered
evidences of this fact.
However there are other things to take into account.
First of all, we don't know how sudden this death has been. From what
I know, the time resolution cannot be so fine to tell if dinosaurs
disappeared in ten years or one hundred or several thousand years.
The extinction is sudden from a geological point of view and, what
is more important, a lot of species were interested by this phenomenon.
In fact it is called a mass extinction.
So what we really know is that a great number of species disappeared in
a period of some thousand years.
Another problem is about the dinosaurs metabolism. If they had not
thermal regulation, their capabilities to adapt to a changing climate
would have been very poor. If thermically regulated, like mammals are,
they would react better. But even in this case, no species can survive
too long if foods availability quickly changes.
Perhaps most dinosaurs were like nowadays reptiles, but recent
discoveries showed that some species had the capability to accelerate
metabolism on demand, pumping blood at a greater speed.
It's worth noting also that we certainly don't know all species that
lived at that time, but only a very small fraction of them.
Let's imagine something really different from current toughts.
thus
It's possibile that the very long evolution of dinosaurs produced at last
a middle-sized, warm-blood (or the equivalent) intelligent being. |
By the way there are several questions that must be answered to be sure that my ideas are not totally wrong. However, a satisfactory answer to all questions does not imply that this theory is necessarily true, but only that it can be proposed without many people laugh at it. After all, it could be really the asteroid...
Questions to be answered:
I have recently read an interesting article on the italian
scientific review "Le Scienze", issue 461, January 2007, pages 72-79.
The title of this article by Peter D. Ward is "Impatto dal profondo"
(impact from the deep), but the most interesting thing to me is
the subtitle (I try translating it back): "Many mass extinctions
could not have been caused by asteroids, but by poisonous gasses
emitted by oceans.". Really interesting, isn't it?
Professor Ward thinks that, although the dinosaurs extinction was most
probably really caused by an asteroid, the older ones were caused
simply by the climate becoming more and more warm.
The warming was apparently caused by volcanic eruptions,
but I like to think that it was caused instead by a technological civilization.
Interestingly enough, this article is not in contrast with
my idea, although it doesn't demostrate it.
Inside this article I found also some terrifying news: the global
warming is becoming to produce the same effects analyzed for past
ages, so we hope not to end with sulfidric acid coming out from
the oceans into the atmosphere. It would not be amusing.