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An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

arstechnica.com

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Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#71

Post by rurban »

nonameiguess wrote: post #57
mstipetic wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For long term survival you need to get off your planet, for which you probably need intelligence. Earth has around half a billion years left until it starts feeling serious issues with our sun. If our evolution took something like 10 percent longer things would be tricky

We could easily seed the rest of the solar system and even a few nearby other solar systems with basic archaea and what not capable of surviving on any large object with water, at least guaranteeing some form of life escapes the death of Earth. It takes intelligence to figure out how to do this, but we have enough intelligence and the means to do it right now, but we aren't since we're largely concerned specifically…

This solar system not. All the habitable space is soon gone. Even with Elon's plans, as seen in the latest Hollywood comedy.

But the next is not far away, just a few light years. Maybe we'll see this in the next comedy . So far it's only in a Stanislaw Lem novel.

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#73

Post by rurban »

Sounds 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

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#74

Post by hexointed »

rurban wrote: post #73

Sounds 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 al…

Or some of the dinosaurs survived just by luck, even though they may have been disadvantaged compared to non-dinosaurs

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#76

Post by paulcole »

rurban wrote: post #73

Sounds 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 al…

> 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.

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#77

Post by GekkePrutser »

erulabs wrote: post #5
CommieBobDole wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, 65 million years ago was really not that far from the present, geologically speaking. https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#66

Wow India is really headed north in a hurry.

And 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

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#78

Post by throwaway2048 »

rurban wrote: post #73

Sounds 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 al…

From 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://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGR5yOrChMA

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#79

Post by gmiller123456 »

mc32 wrote: post #2

Spring in the Northern Hemisphere; Fall in the Southern Hemisphere.

That 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."

Re: An asteroid killed dinosaurs in spring, which might explain why mammals survived

#80

Post by yesenadam »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #77
erulabs wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow India is really headed north in a hurry.

And 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

> 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&...

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