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An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived
- mc32 5y agoSpring in the Northern Hemisphere; Fall in the Southern Hemisphere.
- cedricd 5y agoI was going to say that the landmasses could have been pretty different back then. But I took a quick look and it looks like they were broadly in the same place with respect to N / S hemispheres.
- CommieBobDole 5y agoYep, 65 million years ago was really not that far from the present, geologically speaking. https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#66 https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#66
- erulabs 5y agoWow India is really headed north in a hurry.
- GekkePrutser 5y agoAnd South America and Africa were still quite close together.. the Pacific is even bigger than it is now. Literally a whole half side of the planet filled with water
- yesenadam 5y ago> Literally a whole half side of the planet filled with water It still looks like that today! A host of images showing it: https://www.google.com/search?q=view+of+earth+pacific+ocean&tbm=isch https://www.google.com/search?q=view+of+earth+pacific+ocean&...
- robga 5y agoThe “Water Hemisphere” is 89% water. The “Land Hemisphere” is 85% land. The location [0] may be a little surprising. The shared view above is deceptive due to the land at the edges. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres#/media/File%3AHemisphere_water.png https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_and_water_hemispheres#/...
- yesenadam 5y ago> The “Land Hemisphere” is 85% land. Interesting. Not sure where you got that 85% figure though: >> even in the land hemisphere, the water area still slightly exceeds the land area (with 53 percent water to 47 percent land)
- robga 5y agoYou’re right. Thanks for the clarification. 85% of Earth’s land is in the Land hemisphere.
- mcherm 5y agoYes it is! Hence the mountains.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eatsyourtacos 5y agoUgh why does it keep turning on rotation when changing the dropdown! I'm trying to fix on a single point and move backwards in time to see the change but it keeps rotating the global every time... weird default functionality. edit: weird, now it seems to work fine. I was disabling the 'rotate global' but it wasn't taking effect before
- krick 5y agoDisplay options -> Rotate globe
- YaBomm 5y ago
- osigurdson 5y agoThe Northern Hemisphere does account for 68% of overall land area. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-hemisphere-has-the-largest-area-covered-by-land.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/which-hemisphere-has-the...
- askvictor 5y agoAnd perpetually tropical in the tropics
- contingencies 5y agoFall in the Southern Hemisphere. FYI we call it autumn.
- addaon 5y agoOr uɯnʇnɐ.
- gmiller123456 5y agoThat is essentially their entire point: "By contrast, many species in the Southern Hemisphere would have been preparing to hibernate for the winter as opposed to gearing up for their reproduction cycles. That may have contributed to the survival of those species—particularly mammals, certain amphibians, birds, and crocodiles—who were more likely to be sheltering in burrows or caves at the time of impact."
- imwillofficial 5y agoAnother wildly speculative claim that they will contradict in a few months. Headlines like this are effectively worthless clickbait.
- ghaff 5y agoIt is speculative but it is also a paper in Nature. It's hardly some random blog.
- imwillofficial 5y agoExactly, I hold them to a higher standard.
- feoren 5y agoThat's standard pop-sci title inflation. The article is about how evidence from analyzing fish buried in debris tsunamis indicates that the impact happened in Spring (in the Northern Hemisphere). That is a genuine contribution to understanding what happened. You're right that the hibernation thing is pretty speculative -- but it's also a falsifiable hypothesis that other evidence could shed light on later, so it's not like we shouldn't talk about it.
- dlandau 5y agoSpringtime for T-Rex and dinosaurs
- digisign 5y agoDon't see many Producers references on HN, bravo.
- illwrks 5y agoSeconded! It gave me a good laugh. I need to watch that film again.
- iamthepieman 5y agoI think it would be Springtime for mammals and marsupials Winter for dinos and fish Springtime for mammals and marsupials Come on humans, you've got your wish
- hinkley 5y agoWinter for gerbils and plants.
- asix66 5y agoDo I hear a Mel Brooks tune?
- Flatcircle 5y agoOne thing that isn't talked about as much as it should be, there's a possibility that 65 million years ago during the time of the dinosaurs, the earth's atmosphere was very thick. All these Dinosaurs with their extremely long necks and bodies couldn't support their own weight if wandering around the earth today. The mass extinction event may have occurred simply because the atmosphere changed and these giant beasts used to this exotic thick atmosphere could no longer support their own weight.
- margalabargala 5y agoAre you suggesting that this is the cause of the extinction event, rather than an extraterrestrial impact? Or something more like the impact may have caused a significant change in atmospheric composition? This would not explain the myriad other, much smaller species that also perished, not to mention all of the marine animals.
- zardo 5y agoI would love to see a scientific paper on the bouyant dinosaur theory.
- Flatcircle 5y agolol, why the downvoting? I didn't say it was a fact, I said it was a possibility. https://dl.icdst.org/pdfs/files2/abe347ca228406be4720d5554a69b2a4.pdf https://dl.icdst.org/pdfs/files2/abe347ca228406be4720d5554a6...
- Flatcircle 5y agohttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/26553081_Atmospheric_pressure_at_the_time_of_dinosaurs https://www.researchgate.net/publication/26553081_Atmospheri...
- feoren 5y agoI'm not great at evaluating the quality of Journals (Chemical Industry and Chemical Engineering Quarterly is at least peer reviewed), but that article has been cited 0 times, and its abstract reads like a YouTube video trying to convince me Bush did 9/11. > how can a giant dinosaur such as an apatosaur pump blood up to its brain (more than 13 m above its heart) when animal energetics and physics say that in no way can it do it. Do we have to change the laws of physics and biology? I don’t think so. The "Science says it's impossible! Either we have to change the laws of science, or <my one pet alternative theory out of 10 million other alternatives> must be true!" is just really characteristic of that style.
- BurningFrog 5y agoIt's pretty wild that all of humanity only exist because of that completely random spring surprise!
- throw_m239339 5y ago> Some 66 million years ago, a catastrophic event wiped out three-quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth, most notably taking down the dinosaurs. The puzzle of why so many species perished while others survived has long intrigued scientists. More importantly, it means that even if we annihilate our specie because of our stupidity, life has great chances going on and in millions of years perhaps, the earth might be governed by another intelligent specie. https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/when-will-earth-become-uninhabitable/ https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/when-will-earth-be... > Simple computer models initially suggested this disaster could render our planet inhospitable in as little as 150 million years from now. But late last year the journal Nature published a much more sophisticated simulation by a team from the Laboratory for Dynamic Meteorology in Paris, and this suggests we have got at least a billion years before this apocalypse.
- hvs 5y agoIf we wipe ourselves out within 100,000 years, I'm not sure "intelligence" is a particularly advantageous trait, evolutionarily-speaking.
- enlyth 5y agoThat's an interesting thought, when you think about long term survival of a species, how much does all this technology help? If you think about humans surviving the same asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs, I think we would have a good chance, some people would stay in underground bunkers and eventually repopulate the Earth, but the majority of the population would probably die, and a lot of technological progress would be lost.
- dividedbyzero 5y ago
- odyssey7 5y agoIt's incredible to me that fossils can be linked to the specific day or so of the impact.
- ASalazarMX 5y agoThe article says they analyzed sturgeon fossils that died in the impact, and they found they were in the growth phase typical of their reproductive season, so they don't know the year, but they know the season. The article is quite a read.
- egberts1 5y agoOnly half of the Earth would be destroyed in that manner due to Earth Northern hemisphere and Southern hemisphere having opposite seasons. Go back to the drawing board.
- jedberg 5y ago> Three-dimensional rendering of the partial paddlefish fossil, with googly eyes added for reference. I'm glad to see even serious scientists can have fun sometimes.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoThe author’s “brand” seems to be dayglo pink hair. Scientists, these days, can sport a different attitude, compared to the horn-rimmed-glasses-and-elbow-patched-tweed of the stereotypical “scientist,” of popular culture. I always get a kick out of the mission control videos.
- antattack 5y agoSeems to me that impact spherules are a bit small. Could it be that animal consumed them like today's plastic microbeads?
- rurban 5y agoSounds convincing. But I found a flaw. Typically birds take their winter holidays in the warm continents, they don't shelter in caves. So birds would have gone extinct also. But they didn't. So maybe they did shelter in caves, such as bats do, and then later decided it would be more appropriate to spend their winter holidays at the French Riviera or Cancun and not in their caves anymore. Because the bats messed up all those places. A stretch
- hexointed 5y agoOr some of the dinosaurs survived just by luck, even though they may have been disadvantaged compared to non-dinosaurs
- paulcole 5y ago> Sounds convincing. But I found a flaw. Interesting. Are you planning to alert the journal that published the paper discussed in the article of this stunningly obvious error? It’s very frustrating that every journal doesn’t keep an HN commenter on staff so boneheaded blunders like this don’t continue to slip through.
- rurban 5y agoGood idea, thanks. But before I'll consult with my local birds expert.
- throwaway2048 5y agoFrom all indications flying birds went extinct at the K-T boundary and later flight re-evolved from ground dwelling birds. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiornithes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enantiornithes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGR5yOrChMA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGR5yOrChMA
- pkdpic 5y agoFurther reading suggestion, Ants and Dinosaurs by Liu Cixin. Pretty full explanation.