Dinosaurs 10m years older!

[3113]

Looks like Dinos are even older than we thought:

Scientists have discovered 243-million-year-old fossils of dinosaurs’ closest relatives, pushing back the origin of dinosaurs by at least 10 million years. The dinosaur-like creature, Asilisaurus kongwe, was about the size of a Labrador retriever and had teeth and jawbones ideally shaped for eating plants, indicating it ate a mostly vegetarian diet.

“This shows that the lineage leading to dinosaurs goes a lot further back in time than we thought. The second thing is that it shows that there’s this real ecological diversity,” said paleontologist Randy Irmis, co-author of the study appearing Mar. 3 in Nature. “No one thought that the closest relatives to dinosaurs were these four-legged, herbivorous animals. We thought they were small carnivores.”

I dunno if it outta be called a dinosaur if it was only the size of a dog That's just a big lizard isn't it?

 

[xssve]

Carnivores have to have something to eat, they only evolve when there is prey. I'm guessing that discounting omnivorous primates, at least 90% of the planets fauna is either herbivorous or insectivore.

Technically, they're probably Amniota, but "Dinosaur" is easier to explain.

 

[xssve]

It should prove to be an interesting find, since since they are at the cusp of the re-blossoming diversity of Terrestrial life following the Permian extinction.

 

[Katyusha]

I dunno if it outta be called a dinosaur if it was only the size of a dog That's just a big lizard isn't it?

Dinosaurs came in all kinds of sizes...some were about the size of domestic felines and weighed only a few pounds...I have a cat that could've crushed them by laying down on them!

 

[Zeb_Carter]

And just think they would all still be around if it wasn't for global warming and Al Gore.

 

[Katyusha]

And just think they would all still be around if it wasn't for global warming and Al Gore.

Wait a second...Al Gore invented global warming and killed off the dinosaurs too? Wow! And here I thought he was merely the inventor of the internet.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Wait a second...Al Gore invented global warming and killed off the dinosaurs too? Wow! And here I thought he was merely the inventor of the internet.

According to his holiness.

 

[Katyusha]

According to his holiness.

That's His Royal High-ass to you.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

That's His Royal High-ass to you.

Sorry, next time I seen him I'll give it good swift kick to keep it up there.

 

[Katyusha]

Sorry, next time I seen him I'll give it good swift kick to keep it up there.

Good. We all must pay proper homage to His Royal High-ass and help him keep it up there any way we can.

 

[rgraham666]

Not an especial fan of Al Gore, but he never claimed to invent the internet.

Global warming? The jury is still out on whether it's his fault or not.

 

[Katyusha]

Not an especial fan of Al Gore, but he never claimed to invent the internet.

Yes I know...I still like bringing it up though.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Not an especial fan of Al Gore, but he never claimed to invent the internet.

Global warming? The jury is still out on whether it's his fault or not.

Considering how much hot air he's contributed I'd call it a pretty good case.

 

[TE999]

If that dino was the size of a Lab and a plant eater, I wouldn't worry...if it was a carnivore it could take you out pronto...a Komodo Dragon's about that size and it can kill a human easily if it's hungry...it's saliva's poisonous so a bite's usually enough.

That discovery's cool, tho.

 

[3113]

And just think they would all still be around if it wasn't for global warming and Al Gore.

And here I thought you were going to say that the earth isn't that old and we used to ride on the backs of dinosaurs--you were there, after all. But I'd forgotten how much you know about science. I would have never thought that a nuclear winter caused by a meteor was the same as global warming. Guess I'm going to have to rewatch "An Inconvenient Truth."

 

[stephen55]

It was only a matter of time...

The Asilisaurus was a small, four-legged creatures with a long tail. Their beak-like jaws and leaf-shaped teeth helped the animals eat the soft, fibrous leaves of the primordial palms, ferns and conifers that were prevalent during the Triassic period.

I always knew they would find JBJ's long-lost ancestor.

 

[3113]

And I thought the dinosaurs were old and fossilized....

According to his holiness.

Good. We all must pay proper homage to His Royal High-ass and help him keep it up there any way we can.

Considering how much hot air he's contributed I'd call it a pretty good case.

Wow. Such hatred of Al Gore. Very good. As you've all decided to jack my Dino thread for this tired and dated exchange (masturbating not working today? Well, age will do that)...I'd like you to explain something to me: How much hot air has he contributed? Seriously. I'm a little mystified by all this ragging on Al Gore as an arrogant windbag. Last I looked, he goes around lecturing. He made a documentary, got an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. Which was nice, but that was four years ago. I don't see him waving those awards at stadium rallies.

In fact, I don't see him on at stadium rallies at all, not like Sarah Palin. He's not on daily radio like Rush pontification his false facts and he hasn't his own news channel or show for the purpose of postalizing like Hannity or O'Reilly. He's got a website (scary!). So. When was the last time you heard Al Gore on radio? When was he last on tv? On the cover of a magazine? When was the last time he "shoved" Global Warming down your throats like republican senators fillibustering for the sake of fillibustering? How about the last time you even saw an ad for one of his lectures on a billboard, or a DVD of his documentary at your local rental place?

But somehow he's an arrogant windbag worthy of all this mockery? I'm really interested, Zeb, Katyusha, VM, as to why he deserves this label when he has no television show, no radio show, no stadium rallies....Wait...wait...is it because there's no other candidates for arrogant windbag on the left? The right has so many...and you've no one to make equal fun of unless you dig up Al Gore and all those four to eight year old jokes (talk about dinosaurs!) about him? Hmm. I hadn't considered that. In that light...well, carry on. I'm so sorry he's all you've got to make fun of. He really doesn't compare in arrogant windbag status to greats like Rush, Hannity, Sarah and all their conservative ilk, but if he's all you have to work with....

 

[Zeb_Carter]

He'll probably be a whipping boy for quiet awhile, just as Dan Quayle was a while back in history. Dan was screwup but not as big as Al. IMHO.

 

[xssve]

Quayle made it easy, it was no challenge to make fun of him at all, he did most of the work.

"What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is".

-- Dan Quayle

http://qbnets.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/quayle-oops1.jpg?w=121&h=168

 

[3113]

He'll probably be a whipping boy for quiet awhile

Um. No, Zeb, I hate to tell you this, but...you're one of those last hold outs desperately trying to keep him around because if he goes, well, what will you have to make you look witty? But the truth is...Sarah Palin has already eclipsed him. She is one of the most brilliant screwups of the 21st century.

Al Gore jokes are dead and gone, Zeb, like the dinosaurs. They became extinct in 2008 just as soon as the Republican party launched Sarah Palin into the spotlight along with Joe the Plumber (he was damn good too, but short lived). Al pales in comparison to Sarah; I suspect she's going to be in the public eye and the butt of public jokes for many, many years to come, outlasting any who came before her. Especially if her fanatics try to run her in 2012.

Al Gore as whipping boy is gone. Long Live Sarah Palin!

 

[stephen55]

what's in a name?

Looks like Dinos are even older than we thought:

I dunno if it outta be called a dinosaur if it was only the size of a dog That's just a big lizard isn't it?

Dinosaur; [f. Gk deinos terrible + sauros lizard]

A lizard the size of a Labrador retriever might be terrible, if what you really wanted was a dog. The only Black Lab that I ever had, affectionately named Brew, was a terrible retriever, so that made him a Dinocanis lupus familiaris. But perhaps that's being unkind. Brew was great at retrieving sticks but not ducks. So, that made Brew...

Dinocanis lupus familiaris retrevious xylos rex

 

[mynameisben]

Wait a second...Al Gore invented global warming and killed off the dinosaurs too? Wow! And here I thought he was merely the inventor of the internet.

Al Gore did not invent the Internet. However, he was a major developer for Rhumba Software and several other well known Al Gore rhythms.

 

[TxRad]

What's 10 million yeas to a 240 million year old creature?

 

[The_Fool]

What's 10 million yeas to a 240 million year old creature?

This was my first thought. A matter of perspective.

My second thought was what happened to FatDino?

 

[stephen55]

Quite a lot.........

What's 10 million yeas to a 240 million year old creature?

The earliest known dinosaur fossils are around 230 million years old. The new findings indicate that the dinosaurs and the silesaurs, the group that encompasses genus Asilisaurus, diverged more than 243 million years ago.


So, what's an extra ten million years? (Besides an extra ten million reasons to laugh at the Creation "Scientists".) Well, if you give an early Triassic reptile an average of five years to reach sexual maturity (my off hand guess), that's two million more generations for evolution to work with. Modern humans (sic) have been around for about twenty thousand generations (my offhand guess).

A lot can happen, evolution wise, in two million generations.