Palaeontology

Did dinosaur wind cause climate change ?

By T.K. Randall
May 8, 2012 ·  19 comments

Image Credit: Gerhard Boeggemann The bizarre claim may sound like a joke but is actually a serious possibility. Like modern day cows, large sauropod dinosaurs would have given off huge amounts of methane gas as they digested the plants that they consumed. There would have been so much of it in fact that it could have had a considerable impact on the climate during the Mesozoic era.

"A simple mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important effect on the Mesozoic climate," said Dr Dave Wilkinson. "Indeed, our calculations suggest that these dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern sources - both natural and man-made - put together."

Source: Telegraph | Comments (19)

Tags: