Re: K-T Theories

["Mike Styzen Shelf Expl, 588-4308" <mstyzen@shell.com>]

Bonnie Blackwell says:

>the only problem i have with that argument, is the number of critters in the
>leg.  to kill off enough phytoplankton really damage the ecosystem to the
>extent your idea seems to require, you'd have to destroy 1000's
>of species, whereas disease at a higher trophic level does not require
>so many species deaths.

>i am not arguing here for the disease hypothesis, merely examining the
>relative numbers involved in the food pyramid.

What I'm saying is that from the looks of the evidence that the
phytoplankton was just about exterminated at the K/T boundary.  Even
those lucky survivors who made it through did not have much of a
population for a while.  This makes this a problem that reaches way
beyond the food pyramid.  As I stated before I think there is a general
lack of appreciation of how much of the photosynthetic biomass of the
world is floating around in the ocean.  In my opinion every rain
forrest could be expunged from the face of the earth (no, I'm not
advocating this) and it would be a minor inconveinence.  But if you
reduced the plankton to almost zero we'd all be gasping for breath in
no time.  This is only just considering oxygen.  Look at the Cliffs of
Dover or the Austin Chalk (both just about 100% nannofossil skelital
material) All that calcium carbonate was made of billions of tons of
carbon dioxide removed from the Cretaceous atmosphere daily.  As I
stated before there are probably some other geochem cycles that are
critically affected by the phytoplankton on a day to day basis. 
Shutting this off over any period of time could have a major impact on
the world wide ecosystem whatever the original cause of the shut off.
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|      Michael J. Styzen               Phone: (504) 588-4308            | 
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