Dinosaurs Survived Cretaceous Extinction?

I found this interesting. Apparently evidence has been found that some large dinosaur species managed to survive up to a half a million years after the extinction event(s) of the Cretaceous Period.

Jim Fassett, a paleontologist who holds an emeritus position at the U. S. Geological Survey, recently published a paper in Palaeontologia Electronica with evidence that points to a pocket of dinosaurs that somehow survived in remote parts New Mexico and Colorado for up to a half million years past the end of the Cretaceous period. If true, these dinosaurs would be the only ones that made it to the Paleocene Age.

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If they survived past the extinction event, is it possible that some survived even longer in some remote part of the world?

[edit on 29-4-2009 by BriggsBU]

reply to post by BriggsBU


"If they survived past the extinction event, is it possible that some survived even longer in some remote part of the world?"

Anything is "possible", but what is likely? For dinosaurs to have a viable breeding population, they would need an extensive range. You can't have one dino that has one offspring, etc. They would have a bit better chance hiding in the oceans, but as they're air breathers they'd need to surface once in a while.

reply to post by Gawdzilla


Given their dietary demands, the large theropods would need a colossal amount of food, I don't see how that could be missed...though as you said, anything is possible.

It would undoubtably be rather cool if a breeding population were found, but I think it unlikely. Smaller ones? We see those in zoos all the time. I just don't see how the larger ones could have survived an extinction level event such as has been theorized by scientists.

There you see? We agree again. This is becoming habit.

Originally posted by seagull
reply to post by Gawdzilla

 

Given their dietary demands, the large theropods would need a colossal amount of food, I don't see how that could be missed...though as you said, anything is possible.

It would undoubtably be rather cool if a breeding population were found, but I think it unlikely. Smaller ones? We see those in zoos all the time. I just don't see how the larger ones could have survived an extinction level event such as has been theorized by scientists.

There you see? We agree again. This is becoming habit.

Excuse, please. What "smaller ones" (dinos) do we see in the zoos? Birds? If you mean gators, komodos, etcs., they're reptiles, not dinos.

Just wondering if you have way better zoo than St. Louis.

reply to post by Gawdzilla


Yes, they are reptiles...but they're as close as you are gonna get...so they're dinosaurs, sorta...neener, neener...


ah, now...St. Louis has a very cool zoo. Or so I've heard.

Yes, they did.... they're called "Birds" and "Mammals".

Come on, people, this is old news... old science. Let's try to keep up with the times.

O-315

Originally posted by organism315
Yes, they did.... they're called "Birds" and "Mammals".

Birds, yes. Mammals and dinos both descend from a common

"Since the last common ancestor of mammals, birds and lizards lived before the first true dinosaurs emerged, both dinosaurs and humans appear to have inherited the genes responsible for human hair and animal claws."

Human hair linked to dinosaur claws

reply to post by BriggsBU


It is possible for sea and deep lake monsters to still survive. The theory does give a little push to the idea, but not much.

The people who believe Reptilians exist will also get a push, as some believe they evolved from dinosaurs.

The K-T event was a tremendous calamity. However, it seems that dinosaurs were on their way out at that point, and the disaster simply sped things up.

That some survived the initial event isn't surprising. However, it would have been a downhill thing for them from there.

Originally posted by RuneSpider
The K-T event was a tremendous calamity. However, it seems that dinosaurs were on their way out at that point, and the disaster simply sped things up.

That some survived the initial event isn't surprising. However, it would have been a downhill thing for them from there.

Given that the birds survived the K-T, do you speculate that this was the way the dinos were headed anyway, and that this could have been a "bird world" if the Chixulub Event hadn't occurred? (And/or the Siberian Traps, whatever flavor you like.)

reply to post by Gawdzilla


There's been a book written with that idea, and it's possible. Many bird species are very intelligent, and if given the right circumstances, may have evolved to be the predominant species on Earth.
They may still have the chance, if a significant event knocks us out of the spot.
The event gave the smaller mammals a chance to flourish, while the smaller dinosaurs were probably still recovering.

Originally posted by RuneSpider
reply to post by Gawdzilla

 

There's been a book written with that idea, and it's possible. Many bird species are very intelligent, and if given the right circumstances, may have evolved to be the predominant species on Earth.
They may still have the chance, if a significant event knocks us out of the spot.
The event gave the smaller mammals a chance to flourish, while the smaller dinosaurs were probably still recovering.

Have the name of the book handy, says he-who-is-too-lazy-to-Google?

reply to post by Gawdzilla


Unfortunately, no. It was a book dealing heavily with time travel.
The actual inventors of the time machine had been the advanced bird species themselves. If I am ever able to find it again, I'll note you with the title.

even if this remote group of dinos lived, they would ie out to the lack of resources that have all been previously mention. sorry to dissapoint, but there will be no dinos until a real jurrasic park opens

reply to post by seagull


Actually, no estimeed mod. All the evidence points to dinosaurs being more like birds than reptiles and most likely the evolutionary link between birds and reptiles. Not to forget that a great deal of dinosaurs seem to have been endotherms.

reply to post by deathhawk21


Speaking of Jurassic Park. Kewl article I found....

JACK HORNER wants to raise the dead by growing a dinosaur from a chicken embryo. The publisher calls his idea "astonishing new science that trumps science fiction". Has palaeontologist Horner's stint as a consultant on the Jurassic Park films infected him with some science-fictional virus? Is chickenosaurus his bid to create a new monster-movie franchise?

Fortunately, it's "no" to both questions. In How to Build a Dinosaur Horner is at his best: provocative yet firmly grounded in science. I doubt he'd mind hitting the bestseller list, but his goal is to make people think about how evolution works, and by extension, about our own origins.

Science holds out some hope for cloning ancient DNA and resurrecting the victims of recent extinctions, from dodos and moas to mammoths and woolly rhinos. But for dinosaurs, it doesn't look promising. Horner's former student Mary Schweitzer, for example, has extracted traces of protein and possibly soft tissue from the extremely well-preserved leg bone of a Tyrannosaurus rex that died more than 65 million years ago. DNA is far less stable than protein, so if the protein was scarce, Horner sees no chance that enough DNA survives to clone the extinct giants. So much for Jurassic Park.

Happily, Horner thinks there's a different way to build dinosaurs, and it doesn't involve finding any fossil DNA. He wants to alter the embryological development of chickens, which are living descendants of dinosaurs. His idea comes from the fertile field of "evo-devo", which focuses on how evolution affects the way animals develop from fertilised eggs. Look closely at a developing embryo and you can see some ancestral forms briefly appear. Birds, for example, start to develop tails, then convert the would-be-tail into a pygostyle, a bony lump at the base of the spine which holds the tail feathers.

Careful study of this process reveals that two sets of genes are involved, one controlling the expression of the other. There are the genes to build tail bones plus additional genes to transform the tail bone into other structures. Crucially, evolution most often affects the latter "control" genes. That led Horner to propose altering the chicken embryo so that it would grow a long tail, like those seen in dinosaurs or in Archaeopteryx, the earliest known bird, as well as other ancestral traits such as claws and teeth.

Horner proposes altering gene regulation so the chicken embryo would grow a long dinosaur tail
With Horner's encouragement, Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, thought he might be able to grow a dinosaurian tail on a chick by splicing the fast-growing tail tip from a young embryo onto the tail of an older embryo before it turned into a stunted pygostyle. The experiment didn't work, a failure that points to the tremendous complexity of the development process. We don't yet know how to coax out a chicken's inner dinosaur, but for Horner, it's a worthwhile quest.

Horner's dream is to walk on stage on The Oprah Winfrey Show with chickenosaurus following him on a leash, but he wants more than fame. A dino-chicken, he writes, "would be shockingly vivid evidence of the reality of evolution... The creature would be its own sound and vision-bite". It wouldn't be the first experiment in evolution - we live among uncontrolled examples including microbial response to antibiotics and insect resistance to pesticides - but it would be the first rewinding of evolution, the first time we could watch it happening in reverse.

Linking the most charismatic of fossils with the humble barnyard chicken would make a great scientific story. It would show how molecular changes bring about the large-scale differences in form seen throughout the fossil record. It would teach us about birds, dinosaurs and evolution.

Co-authored by James Gorman, deputy science editor of The New York Times, this book makes for a good read, whether or not a chickenosaurus ever hatches.

SOURCE:www.newscientist.com...

Consider that "dinosaur' is a relatively recent term, what of the possibility that "dragons" existed as dinosaurs?

Add to this the reports of pterodactyl type creatures seen in N. America all the way up until recent times. And the possible "brontosaurus" creature reported by tribesmen in Africa.

It is easy to dismiss when you haven't seen it yourself...but that would be calling hundreds of strangers either liars, or just plain crazy.

Is it probable? Not based on what we have seen...but it is still extremely possible.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

You might like this:

reply to post by Watcher-In-The-Shadows


I saw that when it first aired on Discovery. And you are right, i absolutely loved it.

The mechanism proposed for fire breathing was outstanding, and changed the way i think about cryptozoology forever.

Thanks for linking those, i believe i will watch them again shortly.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Honoured to be of service.