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James R. Cunningham | 1 Jan 2003 02:44

Re: Siberian Traps

Steve Brusatte wrote:
> 
> Ken Carpenter wrote, quoting "Frank"

> >Americans, at least, don't like slow, subtle processes. They like
> >glamorous, fast, easy kill mechanisms. What better than asteroids that
> >strike like the Swift Sword of Death from above?
> 
> I don't know if this is supposed to be facetious, or if "Frank" is > honestly speaking the truth.  If it is the
latter, this is a pretty > serious claim that, truthfully, I believe to be quite absurd.

Though I'm skeptical about the Falkland impacts, speaking as a rather
provincial American; I admit to hoping that all the postulated asteroid
extinctions are real for one very simple reason.  We have the technology
in hand now to prevent asteroid impacts in the future, as soon as we
have our surroundings mapped well enough to give us about a century of
warning. We can stop that type of mass extinction cold turkey (with the
exception of the occasional rare interstellar interloper).  Insofar as I
know, we do not have the present capability to prevent other sources of
mass extinction.  If this attitude is an American cultural phenomenon
that makes me glamorous, please tell all the cute girls in my
neighborhood -- they haven't noticed yet.

Best wishes to all with hope for peace and tolerance during the coming
year.
JimC
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Dino Guy Ralph | 1 Jan 2003 07:19
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Fossil Dig Request

We're planning a driving vacation through the American west (US and
Canada), and would like to take in some dinosaur museums and a family
dinosaur dig experience that a family with a 10-year-old could take part
in.  This would take place during the summer of 2003.  Please let me
know if you have any suggestions, and please reply off line unless you
think your commentary will be of general interest (and abiding by list
rules).

Yours truly,

---------Ralph W. Miller III
              ralph.miller <at> alumni.usc.edu
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John Bois | 1 Jan 2003 15:40
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Re: Siberian Traps


On Tue, 31 Dec 2002, James R. Cunningham wrote:

> I admit to hoping that all the postulated asteroid
> extinctions are real for one very simple reason.  We have the technology
> in hand now to prevent asteroid impacts in the future...
> ...Insofar as I
> know, we do not have the present capability to prevent other sources of
> mass extinction.

On the contrary, we seem to hell-bent on _creating_ the current mass
extinction.  And while we search the skies, killer species interactions
and wholesale habitat destruction are doing the job, albeit unglamorously,
beneath our feet.  I realize it's futile to hope for evidence that
supports a particular poicy, but wouldn't it be better if it were
discovered that meteor-caused mass extinctions were bunk: we need to tcb
right here, right now.
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Stephan Pickering | 1 Jan 2003 15:51
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New Year's Greetings

L'shanah tovah...boker tov...yom tov...in memory of
Arthur Conan Doyle, Roger Casement/John Roxton, E.D.
Morel/E.D. Malone, A.S. Woodward/Professor Summerlee,
Maple White, OBie, Harry Hoyt, Marcel Delgado, Max
Steiner, Noble Johnson,Charles R. Knight, Mario
Larrinaga, Roy Chapman Andrews in spite of himself,
Gershom Scholem, L.S. Russell's hot-blooded dinosaurs,
 Ned Colbert, Stephen Gould, Calvin & Hobbes...I wish
to extend to all on this forum greetings &
salutations, and hoping that, during these coming
months, the debates will be thorough and uncensored,
the data rigorous in parameters.
May the sense of wonder in the Imagi-Nation be
nourished by the immortal storms of awe. And to the
family of John Ostrom the fortitude to remember his
ideas are forever a part of scientific revolutions.

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com
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James R. Cunningham | 1 Jan 2003 18:36

Re: Siberian Traps

John Bois wrote:

> > (jrc)...Insofar as I know, we do not have the present capability to prevent other sources of mass extinction.
> 
> (jb) On the contrary, we seem to hell-bent on _creating_ the current mass extinction.

That's in exact accordance with what I said.  We do not have the present
capability to prevent your scenario.  Like you, I believe we are in the
middle of a mass extinction of our own creation.  I don't think we are
able to stop that one at the moment, though I do have hopes for the
future.  But we do have the present ability to stop asteroid
extinctions, given a little warning -- which we can create for
ourselves.  Why should we ignore that ability?  I'd rather see a cup as
half full than half empty.

> I realize it's futile to hope for evidence that
> supports a particular poicy, but wouldn't it be better if it were
> discovered that meteor-caused mass extinctions were bunk: we need to tcb right here, right now.

Hope is never futile.  It is the salvation of mankind because it
encourages us to keep on trying, whatever the odds.  Since we're talking
about hope, I'd rather hope that most of the major extinctions have been
due to something we presently have the ability to fix.  If that hope is
correct, it would do more to improve our long-term chances than anything
else that comes to mind.  But, needless to say, while one is putting out
the fire in the theatre, it is not provident to ignore the mudslide
roaring down the hill.

Most of us are in a new year now.  Let's all of us do what we can to
make the best of it.
(Continue reading)

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MKIRKALDY | 1 Jan 2003 21:38
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Discovery News Mexican Pliosaur feature

Discovery News has a feature on the Mexican pliosaur find, with Dan Varner's 
fine painting--done from memory I might add--illustrating the article:

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021230/pliosaur.html

Mary
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Richard W Travsky | 1 Jan 2003 22:26
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Re: Discovery News Mexican Pliosaur feature

On Wed, 1 Jan 2003 MKIRKALDY <at> aol.com wrote:

> Discovery News has a feature on the Mexican pliosaur find, with Dan Varner's 
> fine painting--done from memory I might add--illustrating the article:

Wow! Done from memory! I'm impressed that after 150 *million* years he
still remembers what they look like!

;)

> http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20021230/pliosaur.html
> 
> Mary
> 
>
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Ken Carpenter | 1 Jan 2003 22:48
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Re siberian traps

KEN MARTIN has informed me that I sent a message that got truncated.  Sorry to all. So here it is again (you can
go back and pick up the conversation after this point). 

Thanks Ken.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Frank is real, so no need to put his name in quotes. He is a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards (now
NIST) in Boulder, Colorado. He developed the Denver Museum's sky camera program set up across the state
for tracking meteorites. He is also working on a paper with a nuclear weapons physicist at Lawrence
Livermore on trying to better estimate the megatonnage of energy released from crater size.

Everyone's criticism of Frank's statement have all focused on his last hyperbole, rather than his
criticism of the sloppy thinking behind some of the stories about impacts. One has only look at David Raup
and the impact periodicity as a classic example of seeing what you want. As has been pointed out several
times, there is no periodicity, even in Raup's own data. As for the Chatterjee reference, that appeared in
the Proceedings of the Godwanan Dinosaur Symposium (Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, 1996). He states
that either the Deccan Trap basalts are the effects of the shock wave propagating through the earth from
the Chicxulub impact OR that there was an impact in what he calls the Shiva Crater off the west coast of
India. He even states that this crater is larger than the Chicxulub. How can he know the size of the crater if
he isn't even sure it is one?

Hopefully this clarifies things.

Ken

Kenneth Carpenter, Ph.D.
Curator of Lower Vertebrate Paleontology &
Chief Preparator
Dept. of Earth Sciences
Denver Museum of Natural History 
2001 Colorado Blvd.
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darren.naish | 2 Jan 2003 11:53
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DINOSAURS ON TV OVER XMAS

Happy 2003 to everyone.

Like most fat, lazy people I spent most of christmas eating 
and watching TV (err, and _Lord of the Rings_). Luckily 
this year's christmas-new year TV season was a veritable 
dino-fest with dinosaur-based programmes on just about 
every night. If not it seemed that way. 

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

As Steve White has mentioned, the BBC screened two 
Walking With Dinosaurs specials.. the first on 
_Therizinosaurus_ and titled something like 'The Giant 
Claw' and the second titled something like 'Land of the 
Giants'. Both leave me wondering where the WWD-format 
stuff will go next as they have now gone one step further 
and depict an investigator (Nigel Marven) physically 
interacting with Mesozoic animals, a la Steve Irwin. WWD 
has thus entered the realm of so-called 'extreme natural 
history'. Marven was convincingly enthusiastic and acted 
well enough for you to think that he really was seeing real 
live dinosaurs. His previous stuff has involved him creeping 
up on Komodo dragons, crocodiles and so on. 

Thoughts on _Therizinosaurus_ episode: Marven 
investigates Late Cretaceous Mongolia and encounters 
_Saurolophus_, _Tarbosaurus_, _Velociraptor_, 
_Mononykus_ and _Therizinosaurus_. The _Saurolophus_ 
was pretty awful and just a recycled _Anatotitan_ from 
WWD the series (but with a crest) and, unforgiveably in this
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darren.naish | 2 Jan 2003 12:22
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MEXICAN PLIOSAUR

Seeing as quite a few people have asked me...

The Mexican 'Liopleurodon' being reported in the popular 
press is a new Middle Jurassic pliosaur being worked on by 
Dino Frey and Marie-Celine Buchy. My understanding is 
that it is far from complete and is only a partial string of 
dorsal vertebrae. Apparently these were not appreciated 
when first discovered and were incorporated into some sort 
of column-like concrete post (this may be out of date though 
given that the press reports talk of a complete skeleton). 

The dimensions of the vertebrae indicate that (by 
comparison) they belonged to an animal approx. 15m long - 
I suspect the 25m given in some press accounts is lifted 
from Walking With Dinosaurs. The amazing dimensions 
and behavioural attributes being given the animal in the 
press are the usual fantastic hyperbole. 

I have no idea whether the animal really is _Liopleurodon_ 
but this is by no means unlikely given that Middle Jurassic 
South America and Europe share the same marine fauna 
(e.g. cryptoclidids, metriorhynchids, _Ophthalmosaurus_, 
_Leedsichthys_, various pycnodontiforms, semionotids, 
aspidorhynchiforms). I heard several months ago that the 
paper on this specimen was in press - I'm guessing from the 
press coverage that it's now out (though where I don't 
know). Anyone that wants to know more might like to try 
and contact Dino.

--

--
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Gmane