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Re: mass extinction

If the Cretaceous die off lost 75 percent, how big a percentage were the later Cenozoic extinctions. I read somewhere off in the past fog that some of them were pretty significant but I can't pull out the reference from anywhere so dark. Obviously, climate change by any cause along with the corresponding ecosystem impact causes well niched forms to keel over. Nothing man has done could even come close to the climatic change induced by a Cretaceous impactor, a huge flood basalt or an ice age. For that fact, your basic Yellowstone eruption would have some significant say on what lives and what doesn't. That has happened 3 times in the last 2 million years. Extinctions seem to be the course of things no matter what the cause.

BTW Phil, the RNC didn't give Crichton his facts but the other way around. W actually asked him to the white house to talk about the book. You should read it.

Frank (Rooster) Bliss
MS Biostratigraphy
Weston, Wyoming


On Mar 20, 2006, at 6:18 PM, Phil Bigelow wrote:



On Mon, 20 Mar 2006 19:57:03 -0500 Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>
writes:

Remember that the Pleistocene lasted over two million years, and
during that time the flora and fauna had evolved to survive a series
of glacial/interglacial cycles of varying duration. Successive ice
ages did wipe out evidence of previous glacial/interglacial cycles,
but from what I've read and investigated, there isn't much evidence
of major megafaunal extinctions during previous interglacial thaws.
That's an important part of the evidence that humans were linked to
the Pleistocene extinction -- our widespread presence was something
that differed from prior interglacials.



One could argue that we are still "within" the Pleistocene.  Past
interstades have lasted longer than 10,000 years...........

<pb>
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