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Dinosaur didn't die from asteroid


Jon the frog

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Sorry my post was kinda cut in half...

But without kidding do someone have some better theories running beside the big impact or adding up to it? The killing was quite specific in taxonomy letting huge ground dwelling groups able to come back like birds, reptile and mammals.

Edited by Jon the frog
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20 minutes ago, Jon the frog said:

Sorry my post was kinda cut in half...

But without kidding do someone have some better theories running beside the big impact or adding up to it? The killing was quite specific in taxonomy letting huge ground dwelling groups able to come back like birds, reptile and mammals.

It wasn't speciffic in taxonomy Jon. There's a lot of information available out there, some of it is very out of date and this'll be what you see in the media, and some of it will be up to date and reliable, this'll be in the more specialist sources. 

Body size, habiat, and role seem to have been a big thing. Perhaps also it was just sheer luck and numbers. Maybe there were just more mammals around than small terrestrial dinosaurs.

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1 hour ago, oldrover said:

It wasn't speciffic in taxonomy Jon. There's a lot of information available out there, some of it is very out of date and this'll be what you see in the media, and some of it will be up to date and reliable, this'll be in the more specialist sources. 

Body size, habiat, and role seem to have been a big thing. Perhaps also it was just sheer luck and numbers. Maybe there were just more mammals around than small terrestrial dinosaurs.

Absolutely true. Plenty of other animal groups besides non-avialan dinosaurs went extinct at the K-Pg boundary, including pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and ammonites. Many families of still-living groups went extinct as well, including mammals, birds, and crocodilians.

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34 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

Absolutely true. Plenty of other animal groups besides non-avialan dinosaurs went extinct at the K-Pg boundary, including pterosaurs, plesiosaurs, mosasaurs, and ammonites. Many families of still-living groups went extinct as well, including mammals, birds, and crocodilians.

One thing that's always bothered me; small terrestrial dinosaurs don't survive, small terrestrial mammals do, why? 

But then on the last Tetzoo podcast, it was said that the biomass of little furry things might have been greater than the the dinosaurs. So this led me to make the comment about numbers. Is it possible there were just more mammals and this tipped the balance in their favour over small land living dinosaurs? 

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10 minutes ago, oldrover said:

One thing that's always bothered me; small terrestrial dinosaurs don't survive, small terrestrial mammals do, why? 

But then on the last Tetzoo podcast, it was said that the biomass of little furry things might have been greater than the the dinosaurs. So this led me to make the comment about numbers. Is it possible there were just more mammals and this tipped the balance in their favour over small land living dinosaurs? 

I've always wondered if it was because small mammals tended to be fossorial and burrowing helped them to survive. Greater numbers may have been a factor as well.

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18 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

I've always wondered if it was because small mammals tended to be fossorial and burrowing helped them to survive. Greater numbers may have been a factor as well.

Equally though, they have been arboreal, as were the surviving dinosaurs in a way, part of the time. I don't know about the fossils of the mammals that passed through the boundary though. 

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32 minutes ago, oldrover said:

Equally though, they have been arboreal, as were the surviving dinosaurs in a way, part of the time. I don't know about the fossils of the mammals that passed through the boundary though. 

Small burrowing mammals and ones adapted to a water existence, such as the ancestors of the Platypus. Heat, generated by the impact raised global temperatures so much the Dinosaurs were almost completely wiped out. Falling detritus from the explosion was catapulted into space and rained down, all over the globe as flaming meteorites. Forests and grasslands burned. When the temperature dropped after a few days or weeks, the mammals emerged from their burrows that sheltered them from the ghastly heat to an apocalyptic landscape, a scorched and denuded desolation. What was left of the Dinosaurs succumbed to starvation and the acid rain that followed as well as a global winter that lasted for years from the particulate matter in the atmosphere, blocking the sun.

Edited by Hammerclaw
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2 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Small burrowing mammals and ones adapted to a water existence, such as the ancestors of the Platypus. Heat, generated by the impact raised global temperatures so much the Dinosaurs were almost completely wiped out. Falling detritus from the explosion was catapulted into space and rained down, all over the globe as flaming meteorites. Forest and grassland burned. When the temperature dropped after a few days or weeks. The mammals emerged from their burrows that sheltered them from the ghastly heat to an apocalyptic landscape, a scorched and denuded desolation. What was left of the Dinosaurs succumbed to starvation and the acid rain that followed as well as a global winter that lasted for years from the particulate matter in the atmosphere, blocking the sun.

Except that many of the mammals which survived might have been arboreal. And the birds made it through too. We'd have to see exactly which mammal species were present before and after to get a better idea. 

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Just now, oldrover said:

Except that many of the mammals which survived might have been arboreal. And the birds made it through too. We'd have to see exactly which mammal species were present before and after to get a better idea. 

None such are known. The trees, the forests were gone, it took decades or centuries for them to regenerate from what seed survived. There was no arboreal habitat for such mammals to survive and persist, nothing to eat and small mammals have brief lifespans. They had no fortuitous survival strategy to weather the heat. They burned with the forests. Birds found shelter in the higher elevations and in the coolest places of the earth accessible by flight. Survival was in great part, the luck of the draw. Every mammal the that came after evolved from small scurrying things and eventually reclaimed homes in the trees.

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15 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

None such are known. The trees, the forests were gone, it took decades or centuries for them to regenerate from what seed survived. There was no arboreal habitat for such mammals to survive and persist, nothing to eat and small mammals have brief lifespans. They had no fortuitous survival strategy to weather the heat. They burned with the forests. Birds found shelter in the higher elevations and in the coolest places of the earth accessible by flight. Survival was in great part, the luck of the draw. Every mammal the that came after evolved from small scurrying things and eventually reclaimed homes in the trees.

There are some arboreal mammals known to have survived the K-Pg extinction; the stem-primate Purgatorius is a notable example (see Chester et al. 2015).

Edited by Carnoferox
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7 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

There are some arboreal mammals known to have survived the K-Pg extinction; the stem-primate Purgatorius is a notable example (see Chester et al. 2015).

This is what I thought. But I realised I didn't have a clue as to which ones.

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5 minutes ago, Carnoferox said:

There are some arboreal mammals known to have survived the K-Pg extinction; the stem-primate Purgatorius is a notable example (see Chester et al. 2015).

From it's dentition it may have only been semi arboreal and some species, burrowers. It certainly didn't survive the heat, acid rain and cold, hanging from a scorched branch somewhere.  It may have lived more like a ground squirrel. 

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1 minute ago, Hammerclaw said:

From it's dentition it may have only been semi arboreal and some species, burrowers. It certainly didn't survive the heat, acid rain and cold, hanging from a scorched branch somewhere.  It may have lived more like a ground squirrel. 

The paper I linked suggested an arboreal lifestyle for Purgatorius based on tarsal, not dental, morphology, which is a far better indicator of this kind of behavior. Keep in mind that tree hollows could provide shelter from the elements.

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1 minute ago, Carnoferox said:

The paper I linked suggested an arboreal lifestyle for Purgatorius based on tarsal, not dental, morphology, which is a far better indicator of this kind of behavior. Keep in mind that tree hollows could provide shelter from the elements.

Not from the scorching air and fire. All mammals evolved from ground dwellers and began evolving for an arboreal existence after taking to the trees. Some survivors may have had a leg up in that department but none I have seen described seem fully arboreal.

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3 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Not from the scorching air and fire. All mammals evolved from ground dwellers and began evolving for an arboreal existence after taking to the trees. Some survivors may have had a leg up in that department but none I have seen described seem fully arboreal.

Where are you getting this from though? 

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1 minute ago, oldrover said:

Where are you getting this from though? 

Mostly from reading science books and internet sources and coming to my own conclusions. In the absence of competition and the presence of vacated ecological niches, mammals evolved and radiated, rapidly, above the K-T boundary. Semi Arboreal types became fully arboreal. Other terrestrial types also found welcoming homes and a bounty to feast on and adapted to an arboreal existence, as well. It's just extrapolation from known facts and I'm no more above error than anyone else.

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2 minutes ago, Hammerclaw said:

Not from the scorching air and fire. All mammals evolved from ground dwellers and began evolving for an arboreal existence after taking to the trees. Some survivors may have had a leg up in that department but none I have seen described seem fully arboreal.

Study on the humeral morphology and related lifestyles of K-Pg mammals, with some analyzed being arboreal: http://palaeo-electronica.org/content/2017/1983-mammal-humeri-across-the-k-pg 

Arboreal mammals were among K-Pg survivors as evidenced by this and the previous examples. Both arboreal and fossorial mammals seem to be more prevalent across the K-Pg boundary than strictly terrestrial forms.

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But bird... they are not a lot of burrower bird species. Reptile okay low metabolism and like to crawl in crack and stuff, mammals, high metabolism but burrowing is common,  but bird with high metabolism and well...they don't dig hole a lot. Where did they hide ?

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