The dolphins you see at Seaworld are mammals.
Tens of millions of years ago the dolphines were small, furry, four-footed animals I had one as a pet.
So dolphins are mammals who adapted, spectacularly, to live in the sea whence all our ancestors came.
Exactly the same thing happened in the dinosaur era. The icthysaur was a land dinosaurs that evolved to go back into the sea for its entire life. Like the dolphin, it could no longer live on land.
Here is the problem: the icthysaurus became extinct at the same time the dinosaur did. This blows ALL of the theories about dinosaur extinction out of the water, so to speak.
One thing you always hear when the extinction of dinosaurs is discussed is that they died and mammals survived because mammals were little and dinosaurs were big.
‘Fraid not. There were many tiny dinosaurs and one does not see them around any more either.
Other theories run up against the icthysaur. They explain what happened to the dinosaurs on land, but they don’t explain what happened to the ones in the sea. If all the land plants dinosaurs ate died, it would not affect the ones in the sea.
A lot of documentaries have glib explanations like size or why the land dinosaurs died out. I am tired of the ones that would obviously be absurd if little dinosaurs and sea dinosaurs.
It’s like he constant repetition in the 1970s when a new older human ancestor was found. Even the scientific publications would say, “The earliest ancestor of man was in … ” and then a whole new set of theories would pour out based on that find. A few months later another earliest ancestor would be found and another whole set of theories would pour forth.
Every set was wrong, but that didn’t matter. Each set got a lot of professors quoted and published, so they got their promotions and their list pf publications went up. Professors just look at the publications list, not whether what was written made any sense or not.
I stopped that by writing in Science News, to my own astonishment. But Science News reaches millions, so this won’t do it.
#1 by Elizabeth on 11/19/2005 - 6:18 pm
Land dinosaurs didn’t die out. Many of the survivors are the birds.
The rest of the survivors are reptiles and amphibians.
Finds in the last twenty years or so have included feathered dinosaurs.
Some of the birdies are pretty big.
It can be hard to appreciate just how big some of them can be if you’ve never
been feeding birds by a lake or pond and run out of food….I managed to edge
my way back to my car before the swan I’d been feeding decided to object
to my being so inconsiderate as to stop feeding him.
Out of the water, a swan stands at least five feet tall.
I’m taller, but not necessarily stronger.