About 55 million years ago Greenland's eruption and the beginning of the formation of the Atlantic Ocean caused climate warming:

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/070426_petm_volcano.html

The article compares atmospheric change at the time to what is happening today.

"During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), massive amounts of greenhouse gases were injected into the oceans and atmosphere, causing global sea surface temperatures to rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

"The event changed global rainfall patterns, broiled and acidified the oceans, and killed up to 50 percent of the world’s deep-sea organisms. The warm climate also opened up new migration routes for horses and other mammals into North America and might have even fueled early primate evolution."

Primates had already evolved but the event presumably separated Old World from New World monkeys.

Our species might achieve in 100 years what took 100,000 years to happen naturally. And if the PETM is any indication, Duncan said, it will also take our planet about that long to recover.

This guy "Duncan" should join our discussion group. Have a look at the follow-up article, "Timeline- The Frightening Future of Earth". We are indeed living in a Fool's Paradise.

This week an American entrepreneur approached me to show him around some seamounts around here. He's been developing Oyster Farms for cultured pearls. Apparently the Oysters in beds in Japan and NW Australia are showing stress that is pollution related. They've developed beds in the Cooks, the Marquesas and the Tuamotus. The oysters here have black or yellow lips, very highly prized. So I took him out at first light yesterday. I just put in a new Lowrance and didn't know how to use it. He showed me how to get it working, and we came across a trio of Humpback Whales, the first ones of the year, coming up from the Antarctic. He asked me to throttle down and come up closer to them. About 100 yards away he said, "Watch this". He changed the setting on the Fish Finder and, at a certain Ping Speed, the whales took off straight away from us like they'd been shot.

Oh yes, we truly ARE the Masters of the Earth.

Cool link Terry, thanks. I'm gonna look into that PETM thing.

One comment on the article was a little over the top.
'The PETM is “one of the few examples in the natural record where we get changes in chemistry and temperature that are approaching what we’re seeing today,” Duncan said.'

Really? Approaching from what direction? re:

"... causing global sea surface temperatures to rise by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
The event changed global rainfall patterns, broiled and acidified the oceans, and killed up to 50 percent of the world’s deep-sea organisms."

Guess I'm just being picky; I think I get the point.

As an aside:
It wasn't until the end of the Eocene (~35Mya) that climate began approaching what we consider moderate.

Wolfman, protect those seamounts! With 5 billion people living by the coastlines, seamounts will be the only place left to grow food.

~~samwik

Good article. thanks.

What especially interested me about the article is that volcanism is usually said to lower global temperature. I guess it depends on the ratio of gas to particles in the eruption.

Samwik wrote:

"It wasn't until the end of the Eocene (~35Mya) that climate began approaching what we consider moderate."

Up till recently, perhaps still, the cause of this change was said to be the opening of the gap between Oz and Antarctica. This allowed the circum-polar current to develop isolating Antarctica from warmer currents.

Regarding sea mounts. I'm treasurer of the local branch Royal Forest and Bird Protection society. It's is big on saving them. Seems we have a lot within our 200 mile limit.

Wolfman- maybe you could take that Ping Thing and point it at the whales when the Japanese Researchers are harpooning them for science!! It would be good to see them get away.

Interesting infomation on the oysters--Similarly here where anecdotal evidence locally shows marlin being caught in the Bight between Victoria and Tasmania. We do not see these particular tropical type fish here. The water is apparently a lot warmer than usual.

It'll be the cane toad invading next!

Terry! You say, "I'm treasurer of the local branch Royal Forest and Bird Protection society."

I even have a few issues of "Forest and Bird" around the house here. It's a beautiful publication!

Ellis, good idea. Maybe someone should tell Greenpeace.

Thanks,
~Samwik

"What especially interested me about the article is that volcanism is usually said to lower global temperature. I guess it depends on the ratio of gas to particles in the eruption." -Terry

Yep, and underwater volcanism releases much less particulates (usually).

~SA

BOT, after 3 posts.

I found this out there on the PETM (LPTM, IETM).

"Sediments recovered above and below the P/E boundary allow the study of the biotic evolution associated with the P/E boundary . Planktonic foraminiferal “excursion fauna” were found to have been present in the equatorial Pacific in the Paleocene prior to the P/E event but only became abundant elsewhere during the global warming associated with the P/E boundary, while nannofossil extinctions previously associated with the event actually occurred above it.
Thoracosphaera cysts, representing a disaster flora found at the K/T boundary, were found in the Leg 199 P/E boundary intervals."

I think the last sentence is revealing. There are species out there, ready to take advantage of whatever happens.

~~SA

Samwik wrote:

"There are species out there, ready to take advantage of whatever happens."

I suspect the punctuated equilibrium demonstrated in the fossil record is at least partly a product of this phenomenon. By the way did someone send you the F&B mags?

I saw some dramatic pictures of differing rock layers reflecting the PETM events on the web.

re: Forest & Bird; our university library subscribes and gives away unused duplicates about once every year or so. Slightly oversized (like legal sized) and nice glossy photos (if I'm recalling correctly). Does that sound right? It's been 10 years.... Neat stuff to look at with the kids at bedtime (and helped with a couple of their school projects too).

~~SA

Very much nice glossy photos. A friend says it's too depresssing. All the articles are about creatures on the edge of extinction but I disagrre.

Migration routes for horses? Horses never developed in the Americas.
Nor have their pre-historic skeletal remains ever been found.
Bison yes, not horses.
All horses in the Americas first originated when Ferdinand Pissaro brought them over by boat, to conquer the Incas
Neither the Incas, nor the N American Indians, had ever developed the wheel. So horses able to carry "the Gods" and supplies were held in awe by both nations, and frequently stolen for breeding.

Wow, that PETM event is fascinating. Thanks again.

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2002AM/finalprogram/session_2785.htm

The origin of __PRIMATES__ is linked to this!

"Body size dwarfing in Wa-0 mammals cannot be explained as a response to temperature alone, and elevated atmospheric CO2 probably played an important role. Body size is influenced by food quality. Experiments with plants grown in CO2-enriched atmospheres (double present levels) yield enhanced photosynthesis, with more carbon and less nitrogen in plant tissues. The extra carbon enhances production of secondary compounds, inhibiting digestibility. CO2 enrichment reduces rubisco enzyme in foliage, decreasing leaf protein and lowering nutritional value for herbivores, which causes the herbivores to grow more slowly. Slower growth, coupled with any of the usual seasonal temperature, rainfall, or day-length effects controlling reproductive cycles, would lead to reproduction at smaller body size. Such an explanation involves temporary and reversible environmental selection leading to a transient evolutionary dwarfing response.
Faunal changes lagged onset of the CIE by some 13 and 22 k.y., consistent with the idea of a stepped response to climate change. In Wyoming, endemic Meniscotherium appeared in the first step of response some 13 k.y. after initiation of the CIE.
Cosmopolitan Artiodactyla, Perissodactyla, and __PRIMATES__ appeared in the second step, some 9 k.y. later, at about the time they appeared on all three northern continents.
Climate change can have profound and lasting effects on mammalian faunas."
Profound, eh?

~samwik

Mike, probably the glaciations wiped out the ancestors of modern horses. I read recently that also happened to the earthworms and honeybees in North America. Colonists introduced our familiar earthworms and honeybees. I was stunned.
~Sam

"Scientists have revealed that Yellowstone Park has been on a regular eruption cycle of 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago…so the next is overdue. The next eruption could be 2,500 times the size of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption. Volcanologists have been tracking the movement of magma under the park and have calculated that in parts of Yellowstone the ground has risen over seventy centimeters this century." I am new to this forum so if you folks have already discussed "super volcanoes" then my apologies...

http://www.solcomhouse.com/yellowstone.htm

Mitth,
The topic of supervolcanoes has been brought up in the past. If you want to change the topic, please bring up a new thread. Or find the old one and renew it.

Amaranth,

Moderator

Samwik. That link provides enough reading for a year!

Mike asked:

"Migration routes for horses?"

From the information I have collected over the years: three-toed horses (genus Hipparion) left North america via the Bring bridge 5-7 million years ago. The first Equus (one-toed horse) left later, 2-3 million years ago. True horses didn't come out, so to speak, until about 1 million years ago. As to the extinction of horses in North America, we've been down that road before. I haven't changed my mind.

Terry, sounds as if you have a theory about NA horses. Can you point me at a good thread to see "down that road?"

Thanks

~Samwik

p.s. Yes! I copied it and will be back many times, I'm sure. There are probably similar (for other years) links around.
~S

Ok Sam I'll look for horses but in the meantime I found this account of the pattern of tempersture fluctuations over the last 200,000 years. It agrees with what I understood to be the pattern so it must be correct!

http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/nerc130k.html

I found this general article:

http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/northamerica/linked/hunters.html

From the site:

"The effectiveness of the tool making traditions of the Americas are well documented in the bone deposits and hunting sites through out the area. Among many of these sites, horse, mammoth, beaver, sloth, bison, woolly mammoth, mastodon, and saber toothed tiger can be found in just one site. Even the North American native horse was driven to extinction by the North American Hunters (the horse species was not reintroduced until well into the Spanish Conquest)."

And here's a review of Tim Flannery's "Eternal Frontier". Ellis mentioned he was Australian of the year. If you haven't read the book do so. I'm sure it'll strike a chord.

http://skepdic.com/refuge/flannery.html

From the review:

"Flannery does not think it was climate or coincidence that the three major human invasions of North America were followed by mass extinctions of large mammals. The European invasion may look more egregious than the others because the slaughters are more easily documented, there were many more European invaders than there were Asians in the earlier migrations into North America, and the Europeans brought an abundance of germs and guns. The first settlers only had spears but they wiped out the mastodons and mammoths. They wiped out the horse, too, but they killed these animals for food, thinks Flannery. Europeans killed buffalo for fun. They also shot and killed millions of carrier pigeons for fun. Proving they were not completely senseless savages, however, they shot Indians for land and sport."

Cool.
& here's some more from that Nat.Geo. article.

And little worms can trigger big changes. The hardwood forests of New England and the upper Midwest, for instance, have no native earthworms—they were apparently wiped out in the last Ice Age. In such worm-free woodlands, leaf litter piles up in drifts on the forest floor. But when earthworms are introduced, they can do away with the litter in a few months. The problem is that northern trees and shrubs beneath the forest canopy depend on that litter for food. Without it, water leaches away nutrients formerly stored in the litter. The forest becomes more open and dry, losing much of its understory, including tree seedlings.

Whether the night crawler and the red marsh worm actually first arrived on Rolfe's tobacco ships is not known. What is clear is that much of the northern forests in America were worm free until the Europeans arrived there, inadvertently importing earthworms on the root-balls of their plants or in the ballast of ships. The effects of this earthworm invasion have been slow to show themselves because the creatures don't spread rapidly on their own. "If they're born in your backyard, they'll stay inside the fence their whole lives," says John Reynolds, editor of Megadrilogica, the premier earthworm journal. But over time, the effect on the ecosystem can be dramatic.


as I said somewhere else about the worms and bees, "I was stunned."

~SAM

...and thanks for the second post (top of page) also.

I LOL at the last sentence of the 'review.' A very insightful characterization.

Thanks again; and wow, that first link (p.2) is way cool (no pun...).

~SA

I had always thought that the horse reached America through the Spanish invaders. Looks like I was wrong!

Flannery is someone even our annoying Prime Minister listens to, though he has upset some by guarded support for Nuclear Energy. We have none and only one small reactor that produces solely medical supplies. Flannery supports NE because it is less atmosphere polluting than coal (of which we have HEAPS and HEAPS-hence our cheap electricity). However he also supports other forms of alternative energy, unlike the aforementioned annoying bloke.

Whist I agree there is some room for debate as to the cause, how can anyone not think the climate is changing? Record April and now May temperatures here this month after very hot weather (record breaking in some places) all summer.

People like Flannery have one agenda - sell books. This stuff belongs in the Tabloid section of the Supermarket, along with the reports that we are in imminent danger of an Alien invasion, or that Atlantis is rising.

An addage of how to make money in the New Age - Find a niche and fill it.

And to show we should always expect the unexpected, another item from supermarket tabloids:

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21634367-30417,00.html

It seems just because there has been water in Lake Eyre at times we can't assume it was therefore raining nearby. The floods in Queensland have filled rivers that drain into the lake but the surrounding country is drought-striken. Interpretation of ancient data is even less straightforward than we thought.

When I was a kid, I kept Freshwater Tropical Fish. I recall that, back then, you could buy killifish eggs through the mail. These were the eggs of a small colorful fish that could be kept indeterminately out of water.. Appearently they thrive in the lakes of Oz that dry out during the Dry Season. The idea was that you could introduce these eggs into your home aquarium, no matter where you lived in the world, and they would hatch and develop with no ill effects.

Killifish. Funny how things like that stay in your mind well into Adulthood.

Wolfman wrote:

"People like Flannery have one agenda - sell books."

But isn't that the reason people write books? I don't think we can dismiss what he says just for that reason. Are you not prepared to read anything written for the commercial market? Obviously I've noticed on other threads you are uncomfortable with the idea that pre-European inhabitants of America were pretty much as destructive as the European immigrants. But I'm afraid the evidence is fairly decisive. Besides, from the review:

"The Eternal Frontier should be required reading of everybody in North America. It won't be, of course, because it does not cater to the religious right, the fundamentalists and creationists who think the Bible is a science text that tells them to believe the earth is some 6,000 years old."

It's my observation, for what it's worth, that people are prepared to pay money to read all sorts of rubbish that shows science is wrong and the Bible is basically correct after all. But it's almost impossible to sell anything that proves the Bible is fundamentally wrong. I suppose mister Flannery could make much more money if he wrote books of the first sort.

About the killifish. Have they escaped into the wild in North America? That's what most things introduced as pets do here.

Terry, I just have a hard time, personally, seeing our poorly armed primitive ancestors as the "Mighty Hunters" depicted by Hollywood and suggested by those who ascribe to the Mammoth-wiped-out-by-Man Theory.

As for the Killifish, they are extremely ph sensitive, as I recall, and need an alkaline environment. And, at 40mm in length with mediocre swimming ability, the'd be hard pressed to survive very long in NA waters.

Thanks Wolf. Humans don't have to be "Mighty Hunters" to wipe out species. The Maoris who arrived here were hardly in that category yet they wiped out dozens of species. I suspect very few species have died out through hunting. It's precipitous ecological change that stuffs them up. Maoris brought in the rat and the dog, and fire. Cook remarked on the widespread fires here as he moved along the coast, many of them far inland where it is now obvious virtually no Maoris lived.

The Australian Aborigines were also hardly mighty hunters yet a huge number of species died out soon after humans arrived there. Anyway we've been through all this before on another thread.

Regarding the books. There is a big market here for books that claim to provide evidence the Maori were not the first people here. Everything is proposed with all sorts of imaginary evidence: Phoenicians, Celts, Egyptians. Seems enough people doubt the scientists version of our history to provide a good market for such books. In my previous post I was specifically thinking of the book "1421 the year China discovered the world". Big seller but totally imaginary evidence for an ancient Chinese presence in NZ. But that's another subject.

I wouldn't call The Australian a tabloid.

This filling of Lake Eyre only happens when there are flooding rains in the north and it takes months for the water to travel from the north where this time they had floods around Christmas. It is now reaching Lake Eyre, which is normally a salt-flat. Oddly it is also a pelican breeding ground when filled. They feed on the frogs, fish and other wildlife that hide waiting in the dry mud for rain. A few years ago the birds made a mistake and many chicks died when not enough of the water got to the lake. This flow doesn't happen every year and it looks as though this year, while the flow is good, and the wildlife will be able to breed, the lake will not fill right up.

Ellis wrore:

"I wouldn't call The Australian a tabloid."

Nor would I. Sorry Ellis, I was just having a quiet dig at Wolfy. Perhaps unjustified. The Australian was the main newspaper I bought when living there. Occasionally Sydney Morning Herald. The Oz is pretty good although conservative. But most newspapers are. They're have to be owned by wealthy people so that's not at all surprising.

Lake Eyre is certainly an unusual place. Has there been a time over the last 40,000 years when it was full of water for years at a stretch?

I've not read "The Australian" for years, back inna day it WAS borderline Tabloid. The "Boy Raised By Dingos" and all that fluff. Boys raised by Wolves, don't get me started, OK?

But the "Melbourne Truth", don't tell ME that's not a tabloid. Do they still feature the "Chest of the Day?" regarding photos of sheilahs? And what about the comic strip "Ned and His Neddie?" Is that still running? I used to love that stuff. Of course, I was a lot younger then.

The Truth no longer exists. It was awful! "The Age" is a good Melbourne paper, good web site too. "The Sun" is the tabloid you are all hoping for. Whilst it doesn't have a Page 3 girl it only needs a reading age of 10 to understand it. It does have a decent cryptic crossword though- surprisingly!

Wolfman-I am happy to say I have no recollection at all of Ned or his Neddie!

In the 70s (when we had rain) Lake Eyre filled most years, but I don't remember it being ever consistently fill for years and years, though It obviously must have been full when Eyre found it. It is very brackish water. Of course in this area of Australia there is little recorded evidence of climates, weather or trends until about 200 years ago.

Now that sounded really rude--I apologise and did not mean to imply that SGG habitues had 10 year old reading ages!!! I merely meant (for example) that it can be interesting to see complex issues reduced to headlines with words of one syllable sometimes.

Hey. This is interesting:

http://info.anu.edu.au/mac/Newsletters_a...er/_deserts.asp

From the article:

“In previous interglacial periods (which are the warm, wetter climate periods in Australia in the glacial-interglacial cycles) Lake Eyre has always filled to a relatively large permanent water body. It was probably twice the size of the present salt lake and 25 metres deep 130,000 years ago. But in the present interglacial, which began about 12,000 years ago, there was some reactivation of the lake, but only at a very low level. We see this as quite anomalous.”

What caused this? Wolfman. Take note:

"To find out which of these extinction causes were most likely, the researchers turned back to the eggshells. By studying carbon isotopes in the fragments, they were able to detect a change in emu diets from a range of leafy shrubs, small trees and nutritious grasses to exclusively scrub plants but very few grasses. This suggests that the ecological landscape was altered dramatically around 50,000 years ago. Magee and Miller believe that the most plausible hypothesis is that the use of fire by humans changed the face of the continent, leading to the extinction of less-adaptable herbivores like Genyornis."

Cool Terry,

Sounds as if it's too late to join in the celebrations and general festivities surrounding they're focus.
"The United Nations has declared 2006 the International Year of Deserts and Desertification."

Now the horses:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

From the site:

"Most horse species, including all the ancestors of Equus, arose in North America."

"During the first major glaciations of the late Pliocene (2.6 Ma), certain Equus species crossed to the Old World. Some entered Africa and diversified into the modern zebras. Others spread across Asia, the Mideast, & N. Africa as desert-adapted onagers and asses. Still others spread across Asia, the Mideast, and Europe as the true horse, E. caballus. Other Equus species spread into South America."

Seems zebras, donkeys and horses have diversified just in the last 2-3 million years. Hybrids are only just infertile. Humans diversified more recently. Were they in fact different species, unable to produce fertile offspring?

And, sorry about this:

"In the late Pleistocene there was a set of devastating extinctions that killed off most of the large mammals in North and South America. All the horses of North and South America died out (along with the mammoths and saber-tooth tigers). These extinctions seem to have been caused by a combination of climatic changes and overhunting by humans, who had just reached the New World. For the first time in tens of millions of years, there were no equids in the Americas."

http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogram/abstract_55934.htm
http://gsa.confex.com/gsa/inqu/finalprogram/abstract_55024.htm

Here's links to the abstracts for the article you posted, Terry.

CHeers!
~SA

Interesting. The water influences the proportion of nitrogen in the vegetation and the ratio of C4 to C3. Everything is intimately interconnected. Can't resist another quote from the article:

"The coincidence in time of megafauna extinction and ecosystem collapse shortly after the arrival of modern humans, and the lack of similar changes during dramatic climate change earlier in the Quaternary, suggests there may be a causal link."

I promise I won't do it again.