Giant dinosaurs 'crossed continents'

[Judi Lynn]

Giant dinosaurs 'crossed continents'

By Helen Briggs
BBC News


20 October 2016




Some of the giants of the dinosaur family may have originated in South America and crossed over Antarctica to Australia about 100 million years ago.

The dinosaurs were able to make the journey when a spell of warming allowed passage over frozen land bridges between the continents.

Two fossil discoveries in Australia shed new light on this theory.

. . .

Further classified as titanosaurs, they are among the largest dinosaurs ever to walk the Earth.

More:
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-37705462

Science:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/122849368

[BlueStreak]

1. I think those pictures are fake

They don't show Jesus riding the dinosaurs.

[Judi Lynn]

4. He had to get off sometimes to demonstrate walking on water!

[center] [/center]

[awoke_in_2003]

7. The Dino looks impressed. nt

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Actually, 100 million years ago

Pangea had just begun splitting up into the continents we know today. So it was really land bridges between the continents so much as they were still mashed together.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Glad you took the time to post that. It certainly makes so much more sense, doesn't it? Thanks. n/t

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

6. Back before we understood plate tectonics,

some pretty amazing theories of land bridges were put forth to explain how dinosaurs got all over the planet, or to explain why fossils of the same species were found, for instance in South America and Africa.

Once plate tectonics fell into place, all these things made sense. Plus, I also noticed the thing about a spell of warming allowing passage over frozen land bridges. It seems to have been written by someone whose understanding of these things is straight out of 1955.

Roy Chapman Andrews, a respect dinosaur hunter, who was born in 1884 and died in 1960, wrote a wonderful book for children called All About Dinosaurs. In 1953. I owned it as a child and absolutely loved it. The last chapter or so talks about land bridges between the continents, and I recall thinking that seemed a bit unlikely, but at that age I didn't know enough -- no one knew enough -- to question the theory. But these days we know a whole lot better.

[BlueStreak]

5. Right. The article is all mixed up when they say

"spell of warming allowed passage over frozen land bridges between the continents. "

Land bridges emerged during ice ages when sea levels were lowered.