Re: Dino farts

[Dann Pigdon <dannj@alphalink.com.au>]

On Tue, May 8th, 2012 at 3:40 AM, Ian Paulsen <birdbooker@zipcon.net> wrote:

> http://www.livescience.com/20125-dinosaur-farts-climate.html

Surely in order to determine the amount of methane sauropods produced globally, 
we'd need to 
know:

- Whether or not they utilised methanogenic bacteria (not all modern herbivores 
do).
- The total biomass of sauropods in the world at any one time.
- The rate at which digestion took place.

Pinning any of these factors down with any degree of accuracy would seem to be 
a tall order.

I'm also puzzled as to why the amount of methane estimated to have been 
released by sauropods 
compared to the amount estimated for modern domestic livestock is of any 
statistical importance. 
There are more herbivores currently in the world than just human livestock.

And even if sauropods did produce that much methane, wouldn't decomposing plant 
matter still 
produce similar amounts whether it got eaten by herbivores or not?

-- 
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Dann Pigdon
Spatial Data Analyst               Australian Dinosaurs
Melbourne, Australia               http://home.alphalink.com.au/~dannj
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