Re: Extinction

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/22/00 7:03:23 AM EST, jbois@umd5.umd.edu writes:

<< Pardon me if I'm wrong, but here is how I understand it.  Joao says bolide 
causing extinction of dinosaurs is dubious because frogs live.  You say, No, 
many frogs were killed by bolide but some survivevd.  In a way this is using 
frog death and survival to justify the bolide killing dinos.  Otherwise, why 
did you bother replying to his post unless you have taken up a sudden 
interest in frogs. >>

You understand wrong. I was pointing out that criticizing the bolide argument 
on the basis of frog survival is inapt. "Bolide causing extinction of 
dinosaurs is dubious because frogs live" is a non sequitur; frogs are not 
dinosaurs. The bolide could have caused the extinction of all non-avian 
dinosaurs while letting every single frog survive. There is no necessary 
connection between dinosaur extinction and frog survival at all.

Also, I said the bolide >probably< killed a lot of frogs. We can confidently 
assert that it killed >all< of the frogs within a hundred km of the impact 
center, for example. And I would expect that the post-impact conditions that 
led to the demise of the world's dinosaurs probably did not serve the rest of 
the frogs very well, either. This can be checked by examining lists of known 
frog families, genera, and species from around the K-T boundary and seeing 
which survived across it.