Why are dinosaur bones preserved?

[dougettinger]

I was aware of great heaps and immense balls of many sizes of flora and fauna found together on islands and inside caves facing a certain direction especially in northern latitubes that are dated from the Older and Younger Dryas Periods dating from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only possible explanation are huge waves of water.

I just learned recently that the dinosaur fossils found in our western states along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountain ridges had similar characteristics for their burials. Dinoasaurs of varying species, not normally suspected to be in close proximity, were found clumped against hillsides, covered with dirt, and due to pressure (presumably by some great depth of water) were preserved. Normally, if these animal species died on the open plain they would very soon be scavenged or turn to dust in their atmospheric surroundings. The only possible explanation is again a huge wall of water washing over the landscape.

A current explanation for the demise of certain species of dinosaurs 26 million years ago was an asteroid that struck the Yucatan peninsula. So either a tsunami from an existing ocean in the Yucatan area caused this event or some other disturbance of the Earth's crust caused a movement of water from east to west and a possible uplift of the Rocky Mountains at the same time.

Can anyone verify what was just discussed about dinosaur fossils found in the western states ? I can certainly attest from my own searching for dinosaur fossils that the best sites were high on hillsides facing generally eastward.

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, Pa

[neufer]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71HAeHj ... re=related[/youtube]

[Chris Peterson]

I was aware of great heaps and immense balls of many sizes of flora and fauna found together on islands and inside caves facing a certain direction especially in northern latitubes that are dated from the Older and Younger Dryas Periods dating from 15,000 to 10,000 years ago. The only possible explanation are huge waves of water.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the only explanation, although it's a likely one. And hardly surprising, since this period marks the end of the last glacial, and huge floods were common.

I just learned recently that the dinosaur fossils found in our western states along the eastern side of the Rocky Mountain ridges had similar characteristics for their burials. Dinoasaurs of varying species, not normally suspected to be in close proximity, were found clumped against hillsides, covered with dirt, and due to pressure (presumably by some great depth of water) were preserved. Normally, if these animal species died on the open plain they would very soon be scavenged or turn to dust in their atmospheric surroundings. The only possible explanation is again a huge wall of water washing over the landscape.

A current explanation for the demise of certain species of dinosaurs 26 million years ago was an asteroid that struck the Yucatan peninsula. So either a tsunami from an existing ocean in the Yucatan area caused this event or some other disturbance of the Earth's crust caused a movement of water from east to west and a possible uplift of the Rocky Mountains at the same time.

The meteorite that contributed to the extinction of dinosaurs was 65 million years ago. It did create tsunamis, but there is no evidence for that outside coastal zones, which does not include the western or central U.S. Nor is there evidence that the demise of the dinosaurs was something that occurred immediately after the impact; it appears to have taken at least hundreds of thousands of years- well after any direct impact events like floods. I'm not aware of anything linking dinosaur fossil sites to the direct effects of an impact. In addition, I'm quite sure that there was never enough water depth for water pressure to be a factor in fossil formation.

Both in the case of recent and ancient fossils, there is a selection bias that can be created by floods. Floods have happened regularly through the eons, for a variety of regions. Large floods can kill and concentrate large numbers of animals, resulting in local fossil concentrations. It would be a mistake to work this backwards, and try to suggest massive events that created simultaneous extinctions over large regions. Floods are fundamentally local events.

Can anyone verify what was just discussed about dinosaur fossils found in the western states ? I can certainly attest from my own searching for dinosaur fossils that the best sites were high on hillsides facing generally eastward.

This may be a feature of your local area. Our paleontology department has people out all over the American West on different digs, and I'm not aware of any orientation bias.

[dougettinger]

Floods as we know them are definitely local events. That is why Noah's Flood can only be thought as a preposterous legend. The evidence of piles of large trees and fauna indicate more a type of flooding that covered large land masses. The sudden death of large and small animals, including freeze-drying, during the Younger Dryas Period reaching around the globe in the northern latitudes does not make one think of local flooding by rains or slow glacier melting. And by the way, these same fauna went extinct during the same time period in the southern hemisphere, but less dramatic digs have been reported.

Another geological feature that is difficult to explain are erratics, glacier-transported rock that differ from the local bed rock. Some of these house size rocks supposely were transported 500 miles and are either embedded in the till or occur on the ground surface. Some known facts about glaciers of the ice ages are that they occurred on basically flat land unlike glaciers in mountains that can move downhill because of gravity. The northern ice-age glacier does not move; they are created in place and melt in place and create gravel due to their weight and erosion of underground rivers as they are melting. I have seen erratics myself in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, in Scotland, and in New England; there was no chance for these rocks to have moved downhill from miles in any direction.

Geological erratics can easily be explained outside the box of glacier transport which is impossible except in mountain ranges. Erratics could only be moved by huge volumes of water.

Chris, do you have any geologist friends that question whether catastrophic events have occurred besides the accepted asteroid strike ?

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, PA

[dougettinger]

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y71HAeHj ... re=related[/youtube]

Hello Art,

I loved the animation of evolution's march with Bolero playing in the background.
We always have Art to fall back on, if all else fails.

Doug Ettinger

[rstevenson]

... Geological erratics can easily be explained outside the box of glacier transport which is impossible except in mountain ranges. Erratics could only be moved by huge volumes of water. ...

I grew up in an area of south-eastern Ontario where it was quite easy to find long lines gouged into flat rocks by other smaller rocks being dragged across them by glaciers. Water wouldn't do that. I now live quite near a recently (in geological terms) glaciated area -- Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia -- which still shows many large erratics plainly sitting where they didn't "grow", having been dragged there by glaciers. Neither of these areas is now or was recently a mountainous area.

(Thinking about this thread together with your other one about the origin of the Grand Canyon suggests to me that you're trying hard to dance around discussing an alternative scientific theory -- something along the lines of catastrophic world-wide floods -- which would break Rule 15. But it's for others to decide if the discussion should be stopped.)

Rob

[neufer]

... Geological erratics can easily be explained outside the box of glacier transport which is impossible except in mountain ranges. Erratics could only be moved by huge volumes of water. ...

I grew up in an area of south-eastern Ontario where it was quite easy to find long lines gouged into flat rocks by other smaller rocks being dragged across them by glaciers.

And your folks bought that excuse

Water wouldn't do that. I now live quite near a recently (in geological terms) glaciated area -- Peggy's Cove, Nova Scotia -- which still shows many large erratics plainly sitting where they didn't "grow", having been dragged there by glaciers. Neither of these areas is now or was recently a mountainous area."

And you're still spelling Peggys Cove as "Peggy's Cove"

Finnegans Wake: Page 508

-- Blondman's blaff! Like a skib leaked lintel the arbour leidend with . . .?
-- Pamelas, peggylees, pollywollies, questuants, quai aquilties, quickamerries.
-- Concaving now convexly to the semidemihemispheres and,
from the female angle, music minnestirring, were the subligate sisters,
P. and Q., Clopatrick's cherierapest, mutatis mutandis, in pretty much
the same pickle, the peach of all piedom, the quest of all quicks?

(Thinking about this thread together with your other one about the origin of the Grand Canyon suggests to me that you're trying hard to dance around discussing an alternative scientific theory -- something along the lines of catastrophic world-wide floods -- which would break Rule 15.)

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

But catastrophic state-wide floods are still OK...right

Missoula Floods

---

<<Geologist J Harlen Bretz first recognized evidence of the catastrophic floods, which he called the Spokane Floods, in the 1920s. He was researching the Channeled scablands in Eastern Washington, the Columbia Gorge and the Willamette Valley of Oregon. In the summer of 1922, and for the next seven years, Bretz conducted field research of the Columbia River Plateau. He had been interested in unusual erosion features in the area since 1910 after seeing a newly published topographic map of the Potholes Cataract. Bretz coined the term Channeled Scablands in 1923 to describe the area near the Grand Coulee, where massive erosion had cut through basalt deposits. Bretz published a paper in 1923, arguing that the channeled scablands in Eastern Washington were caused by massive flooding in the distant past.

Bretz's view, which was seen as arguing for a catastrophic explanation of the geology, ran against the prevailing view of uniformitarianism, and Bretz's views were initially held in disregard. The Geological Society of Washington, D.C invited the young Bretz to present his previously published research at a January 12, 1927 meeting where several other geologists presented competing theories. Another geologist at the meeting, J.T. Pardee, had worked with Bretz and had evidence of an ancient glacial lake that lent credence to Bretz's theories. Bretz defended his theories and this kicked off an acrimonious forty year debate over the origin of the Scablands. Both Pardee and Bretz continued their research over the next 30 years, collecting and analyzing evidence that led him to identify Lake Missoula as the source of the Spokane Flood and creator of the Channeled Scablands.

After J.T. Pardee studied the canyon of the Flathead River, he estimated that flood waters in excess of 45 miles per hour (72 km/h) would be required to roll the largest of the boulders moved by the flood. He estimated the water flow was nine cubic miles per hour, more than the combined flow of every river in the world. Estimates place the flow at ten times the flow of all current rivers combined.

As the depth of the water in Lake Missoula increased, the pressure at the bottom increased enough to lower the freezing point of water below the temperature of the ice forming the dam. This allowed liquid water to seep into minuscule cracks present in the ice dam. Over a period of time, the friction from water flowing through these cracks generated enough heat to melt the ice walls and enlarge the cracks. This allowed more water to flow through the cracks, generating more heat, allowing even more water to flow through the cracks. This feedback cycle eventually weakened the ice dam so much that it could no longer support the pressure of the water behind it, and it failed catastrophically. This same process triggered a similar event in Iceland on November 5, 1996.

As the water emerged from the Columbia River gorge, it backed up again at the 1 mile wide narrows near Kalama, Washington. Some temporary lakes rose to an elevation of more than 400 ft (120 m), flooding the Willamette Valley to Eugene, Oregon and beyond. Iceberg rafted glacial erratics and erosion features are evidence of these events. Lake-bottom sediments deposited by the Missoula Floods are the primary reason for the agricultural richness of the Willamette Valley.

After analysis and controversy, geologists now believe that there were 40 or more separate floods, although the exact source of the water is still being debated. The peak flow of the floods is estimated to be 40 to 60 cubic kilometers per hour (9.5 to 15 cubic miles per hour). The maximum flow speed approached 36 meters/second (130 km/h or 80 mph). Up to 1.9×1019 joules of potential energy were released by each flood (the equivalent of 4500 megatons of TNT). The cumulative effect of the floods was to excavate 210 cubic kilometres (50 cu mi) of loess, sediment and basalt from the channeled scablands of eastern Washington and to transport it downstream.>>

[Chris Peterson]

Chris, do you have any geologist friends that question whether catastrophic events have occurred besides the accepted asteroid strike ?

I'm not sure what you're asking. Certainly, most (probably all) of the geologists I know believe that catastrophic events have occurred over the history of the Earth: asteroid and comet impacts, massive tsunamis, floods, volcanic basalt floods, etc. Rare catastrophic events had global impact, some affected fairly large regions. I don't think there is much controversy in that viewpoint.

Most geologists believe that the K-T extinction was precipitated by an asteroid or comet impact. A minority believe that it was caused by volcanic activity, in particular the activity that created the Deccan Traps. Some believe in a combination, such as the Traps being a consequence of an impact (not a well supported idea), or the extinction being a result of multiple stresses.

I am not aware of any evidence of continental scale flooding in North America at the end of the Cretaceous (or any other time, for that matter). I don't know of any well regarded theory of the K-T extinction that considers flooding a major factor.

[rstevenson]

And you're still spelling Peggys Cove as "Peggy's Cove"

Wikipedia says "Peggys Cove..., also known as Peggy's Cove from 1961 to 1976, is a small rural community located on the eastern shore of St. Margarets Bay in Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality."

Can I help it if the province has dumbed down its signage and nomenclature?

Rob

[neufer]

And you're still spelling Peggys Cove as "Peggy's Cove"

Wikipedia says "Peggys Cove..., also known as Peggy's Cove from 1961 to 1976, is a small rural community located on the eastern shore of St. Margarets Bay in Nova Scotia's Halifax Regional Municipality."

Can I help it if the province has dumbed down its signage and nomenclature?

Join the Apostrophe Protection Society.
---------------------------------

John Kelly's Washington
Let's Show the Apostrophe Some Love
By John 'Answer Man' Kelly, Monday, February 23, 2009

<<Consider the apostrophe. It is one of the smallest elements of the English language and yet it is so powerful that it can convey ownership as surely as any deed or contract. It can conjure up the state of being as surely as any philosopher.

And now, its under assault.

Right there, for example: Its under assault. That's exactly the kind of mistake that drives grammarians nut's.

There's another one: nut's. Perhaps the only thing more annoying than not using an apostrophe when the situation demands it is using one when the situation doesn't.

In England, two local governments -- in Birmingham and in Wakefield -- have recently decided it's too much trouble to keep straight which street names require apostrophes and which don't. In Birmingham, St. Paul's Square will henceforth be known as St. Pauls Square. This reminded me of a shopping center in Hyattsville that, after a renovation a few years ago, became the Mall at Prince Georges. The county may be Prince George's, but the shopping center is the Mall at Prince Georges. Go figure.

If you think of the apostrophe as a comma that floats above the ground -- and I don't know why you would -- then people are trying to shoot it down, blast it from the sky, obliterate it.

At least one man is trying to save it.

John Richards is an 84-year-old retired journalist from Lincolnshire in England. In 2001, he founded the Apostrophe Protection Society, an organization devoted to saving that unloved little piece of punctuation, lest it go the way of the passenger pigeon or the thylacine. "I think that grammar is a valued part of our civilization," John told me when I rang him up the other day. "I don't like any attempt to diminish it. . . . Things like a city council removing apostrophes is a backward step, and it sets a very poor example to children."

John sees glaring errors everywhere. "I see a lot of signs in shops: 'CD's for Sale' -- CD apostrophe S. I think that annoys me as much as anything. We have a cafe in the town which offers 'Teas' -- Teas apostrophe. It annoys me. In fact, I won't go into the place. Also, I notice quite a lot of people now, if a word ends in an S, don't put an apostrophe after the S, just an apostrophe. That's also very annoying."

John believes there are several forces conspiring against correct apostrophe usage. For starters, teachers can't be bothered to get it right. "Secondly, I wonder about the media," he said. "Some newspapers -- not The Washington Post, of course -- are a little careless about their use of words."

Then there's the ubiquity of text messaging, where speed, not correctness, is of the essence. "People get used to not bothering in texts and then don't bother in more official documents."

---------------------------------

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01761.html

John Kelly's Washington
No matter how it's spelled, Veirs has a long history behind it
By John 'Answer Man' Kelly, Sunday, November 22, 2009

<<Last week in this space, Answer Man asked parenthetically (and somewhat rhetorically), "What is it with these mills?" He should know better than to think there's such a thing as a rhetorical question.

Gerald Baughman of Chantilly wrote: "I once read in Scientific American magazine that (as I recall) at one time no one east of the Mississippi lived more than 15 miles from a gristmill. I think it related to the round trip a horse could make in a day. Anyway, judging by the number of 'mill' names in West Virginia where I grew up, it is believable."

The subject at hand last week was the proper spelling of Veirs Mill Road in Montgomery County. Norma Downes of Alexandria is descended from the first Veirs in the United States, an immigrant named Job Vear who arrived in Anne Arundel County in 1677. "It is important to realize that in the early years of immigration, the spelling of names was usually left up to the person who was recording the information," Norma wrote. "Spelling was phonetic. As long as it sounded okay, it often wasn't questioned, partly because many people did not know how to spell their names."

Where did the name come from in the first place? Jean Hunt's late husband, Lester, used to edit a family newsletter devoted to his Veirs/Viers ancestors. Jean, who lives in California, was kind enough to consult a book titled "The Fighting Veres," written by Clements R. Markham and published in 1888. It's about Sir Francis Vere and Sir Horace Vere, a pair of English generals. According to the book, these Veres were originally Danes from Normandy.

Mary Gordon Peter Malloy of Arnold is the Veirs descendant who agitated to get Montgomery to fix the misspelled signs. She wrote with a correction: Samuel Clarke Veirs, for whom the road was named, was her great-great-grandfather, not her great-great-uncle. "The mistakes in spelling the name of the Montgomery County family is sometimes due to errors in print," she pointed out.

Pete Prahlad was among several readers to note that the "i before e" rule does not apply to proper nouns. Even some words don't follow the rule. Weird, isn't it?

Why not call the road "Veirs's Mill Road"? And why not call the Virginia creek Answer Man wrote about "Roach's Run"? Well, as Richard Stone Rothblum of the District pointed out:

"According to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names of the U.S. Geological Survey, formal geographic names do not include apostrophes."

Indeed, here is the relevant passage from the board's Principles, Policies and Procedures document: "Apostrophes suggesting possession or association are not to be used within the body of a proper geographic name (Henrys Fork: not Henry's Fork). The word or words that form a geographic name change their connotative function and together become a single denotative unit. They change from words having specific dictionary meaning to fixed labels used to refer to geographic entities. The need to imply possession or association no longer exists. Thus, we write 'Jamestown' instead of 'James' town' or even 'Richardsons Creek' instead of 'Richard's son's creek.' The whole name can be made possessive or associative with an apostrophe at the end as in 'Rogers Point's rocky shore.' ">>

---------------------------------

John Kelly's Washington
Answer Man tracks an apostrophe marked by periodic disappearances
By John 'Answer Man' Kelly Sunday, November 29, 2009

<<Several readers wrote in after last week's column in which Answer Man noted how the U.S. Board on Geographic Names eschews apostrophes. What about Prince George's County?

"Prince George's County is what we call an administrative name," explained Lou Yost, executive secretary of the domestic names committee for the Board on Geographic Names. "The Board on Geographic Names has delegated the authority to the state in naming the features, whereas it's the physical features and unincorporated populated places that the board rules on."

While it's true that the board doesn't like apostrophes, since 1890 it has allowed five uses of it in natural features, most famously in 1933 when residents of Martha's Vineyard successfully lobbied to keep their apostrophe. The others are Ike's Point in New Jersey (1944, because, the board wrote, "it would be unrecognizable otherwise"); John E's Pond in Rhode Island (1963, because it could be confused as John S Pond); Carlos Elmer's Joshua View (1995, at the request of the Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names because "otherwise three apparently given names in succession would dilute the meaning," "Joshua" referring to a stand of trees), and Clark's Mountain in Oregon (approved in 2002 at the request of the Oregon Board to correspond with the personal references of Lewis and Clark).

The Prince George's apostrophe has been peripatetic. A 1931 article in The Washington Post about the earliest records of the county said it did not have an apostrophe when it was founded.

But in 1952, Maryland state archivist Morris L. Radoff insisted the apostrophe was correct. Yes, some early records had been found without the apostrophe, "but it just wasn't used often in the 17th century," he told The Post. He admitted that the original engrossed acts of the General Assembly were destroyed by a fire in the State House in 1704.

What's clear is that for most of the 20th century it was Washington Post style not to use the apostrophe. In fact, in a 1947 article about efforts by the newly formed Prince George's Press Association to encourage publications to use the apostrophe, The Post left the apostrophe out, referring to the "Prince Georges Press Association."

Why no apostrophe? Answer Man thinks it must have to do with the efforts of Postmaster General John Wanamaker, who in the 1890s, inspired by the Board of Geographic Names, announced several guidelines. Among them: "The possessive form should be avoided whenever it can be done without destroying the euphony of the name, or changing its descriptive application."

That was for post offices, but the edict's influence appears to have spread. Susan Pearl of the Prince George's County Historical Association looked through some old newspapers. Legal notices published in the Planters' Advocate and Southern Maryland Advertiser before the Civil War refer to "Prince George's County." But when she pulled out a copy of the Prince George's Post from 1946, the name of the newspaper was "The Prince Georges Post."

The tide eventually turned, however. In October 1965, The Post started referring to "Prince George's County." The Prince George's Post added an apostrophe in 1972, after a change of ownership. Among the other rules announced way back by Wanamaker was that names ending in "borough" be abbreviated to "boro." Prince George's got its apostrophe back but Upper Marlboro never got its "ugh.">>

---------------------------------

Art Neuendorffer (of Prince George's County)

[dougettinger]

Art, your apostrophe protection awareness moved some waves in my brain. Our forefathers moved to this continent and took over the land from the indigenous peoples because of that invention, the apostrophe. This simple mark essentially removed the need to evolve ever larger teeth, claws, and muscles in order to take over new territory. Humanity could evolve in a more delicate fashion after the apostrophe was perfected. It is astounding how you provide so much enlightenment.

Also, thanks for the article about massive flooding in the Northwest. I already knew about this flood, but it made me realize that this type of flooding could have happened at the edges and even in the middle of the giant northern ice age glacier as it was melting. This concept better helps my visualization of geological erratics and the large clumping of flora and fauna.

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, PA

[Chris Peterson]

Also, thanks for the article about massive flooding in the Northwest. I already knew about this flood, but it made me realize that this type of flooding could have happened at the edges and even in the middle of the giant northern ice age glacier as it was melting. This concept better helps my visualization of geological erratics and the large clumping of flora and fauna.

A characteristic of large ice sheets is the presence of surface and subsurface lakes, sometimes containing very large volumes of water. And a characteristic of melting or retreating ice sheets is the breaking of ice dams containing such lakes. The result is that you can get truly impressive floods, capable of carving entire canyons in days or even hours. This is seen today on a smaller (but still impressive) scale in Iceland.

Although such floods are small on a continental scale, and never anything other than fairly local disasters, they have the potential to change global climate. It is widely speculated that a huge release of fresh water into the Atlantic following a broken ice dam shut down the thermohaline circulation, causing the reduced global (or at least, northern hemisphere) temperatures of the Younger Dryas.

[dougettinger]

Large scale flooding during the cyclic periods of glaciation can be understood due to melting glaciers and ice dam breaks.

Glaciation periods during the ages of the dinosaurs is not known. Large scale flooding had to be a factor for preserving dinosaur fossils. Possibly tsunamis besides local flooding were factors in those early times. Thanks for all the discussion.

Doug Ettinger
Pittsburgh, PA

[Chris Peterson]

Large scale flooding had to be a factor for preserving dinosaur fossils.

I disagree completely. Even very small scale local flooding could result in dinosaurs drowning and being preserved in sediment. And most dinosaur fossils are not associated with flooding at all, but simply represent animals that died along the edges of lakes or seas and were preserved. There are a few examples of rich fossil fields associated with flooding, but they are the exception, not the rule. And I know of no association with what could be called large scale flooding.

[dougettinger]

I will accept you word on this matter.

Doug Ettinger

[Chris Peterson]

I will accept you word on this matter.

I was just stating my understanding of the distribution of dinosaur fossils. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'm certainly interested in learning about it.

I always try to make a clear distinction between not being aware of evidence, and specifically knowing of evidence supporting or refuting a specific assertion.

[dougettinger]

I know more about the Younger Dryas Period fossils and much less about dinosaur fossils. I will visit my local Natural History museum and learn more. I am sure you know more especially since you live near some of the more important dinosaur digs.

When I hear certain interesting opinions I like to collaborate or refute them with other opinions and possibly good references. I was on one of those missions.

Doug Ettinger
Pittburgh, PA