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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Dinosaurs Are Not Ancient!

Dinosaurs are often regarded as ancient, even early Earth life forms, but the following graph should dispel this notion once and for all:
 
 
You can see that the dinosaurs (excluding birds) only existed from 230 million (five percent of Earth's full age) and last only a about three percent of that age.  Humans appear a mere 65 million years later.  Even the first animal life 700-800 million years ago, or about eighteen percent of that age.  The first life starts around 3500-4000 million years, when out planet was already close to a billion years old (longer itself than the span of animal life!).  This often comes as a surprise even to people who are scientifically educated.
 
One consequence of this is that dinosaurs were probably as fully modern as today's mammals and birds; they were not "primitive" at all, and weren't driven into exaction by the latter.  A large asteroid impact is now the main theory behind the disappearance of non-avian dinosaurs, perhaps combine the mass volcanic eruptions in India.  Still, it is puzzling why at least some of the smaller, bird-like dinosaurs didn't sneak through; perhaps a few did (just as a few mammals and birds did) but the quicker evolution of the latter drove them into fossil grounds we simply haven't yet.
 
More on non-avian dinosaurs (most have feather, like "Velociraptor" (which wasn't) on Jurrasic Park.



Rejuvenation

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