Re: The fungi did it

[frank bliss <frank@blissnet.com>]

I also remember seeing on a Discovery Channel show (years ago)  about a 
mid to late Cenozoic kill off (in perhaps Kansas) where numerous 
mammals had paleopathologic evidence of lung disease because of ash 
which was eventually dated coterminously to an eruption out west (maybe 
in Idaho).  The link was discovered when a prof working on the mammals 
happened to sit in on a lecture about a volcano spewing ash half way 
across the continent and he put two and two together.  The (moderately 
well done for a cheap production) recent docudrama about Yellowstone 
erupting brought the symptomatics into recent thought.

No question that fungi, bacteria and viruses would take advantage of an 
already weakend immune system (by climatic stress) let alone lungs 
partially filled with ashy mud and bucky ball soup.  Again, the effects 
would be secondary to the primary cause of particulate pollution. I 
know that air breathing marine reptiles would have the same issues but 
I don't know how such fallout would effect fish populations.  Are gills 
as sensitive to ash?
Frank Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming

On Jun 21, 2005, at 4:20 PM, Richard W. Travsky wrote:

> On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, frank bliss wrote:
> > Don't forget the problems affiliated with silicosis from ash 
> > inhalation
>
> This stirs an old recollection of an instance of this in the middle US 
> (I
> think it was), old mammals/mesozoic something or other. The remains 
> showed
> they presumably died from ash inhalation. Mass kill of some kind...
>
> Sorry I recall this more accurately...
>
> > as well as carbon particles from the fires.  The massive number 
> > animals
> > with lung disease in the years following the impactor must have been
> > made much more miserable by any other factors present as well. Fungi 
> > is
> > opportunistic in its approach so secondary infections would be a 
> > likely
> > course of progress.  Big animals inhale large amounts of air through
> > respiration and thus become big air filters.  Smaller organisms may 
> > not
> > have suffered as much.    It makes sense to me that Fungi was no fun.
> > Gee.  ;-)
> > [...]