Flatulent Dinosaurs May Have Warmed the Earth - Study
Flatulent dinosaurs are one of the major reasons for global warming, according to a new report.
An international team of scientists have discovered that giant flatulent dinosaurs such as Sauropods are one of the main culprits behind global warming. The discovery was made while the researchers were analysing some data from the Late Jurassic Morrison Formation in USA.
Initially the scientists had analysed the exact methane production in the Mesozoic era using a new technique. The researchers studied the methane output data from the modern herbivores such as cow.
An analysis of the amount of methane and the bodyweight of the cow with that of a group of flatulent Sauropod revealed that the dinosaurs could produce approximately 520 million tones of methane gas annually.
Sauropods, which is also known as Brontosaurus, was one of gigantic plant eating animals that lived during the Mesozoic Era. Scientists believe that sauropod dinosaurs could potentially have played a significant role in influencing climate through their methane emissions.
Currently global methane production is approximately 500 million tonnes annually. Even though our emission is 500 million tones, it is quite less compared to Mesozoic age methane emission. In Mesozoic age only Sauropods had produced so much methane.
Earlier, another group of researchers conducted a study and they found that green house gas in Mesozoic era was quite high compared to today's level. It is found that green house gas was around 10C or 18 F in that era, according to the BBC.
Methane is one of the gases that cause green house effect. It increases the temperature of the earth's atmosphere because green house gases absorbs and emits radiation within the thermal range, this harmful radiation leads to global warming.
Scientists claim humans have pushed levels of the gas up 2.5 times higher than they should be and estimate this is responsible for 20 per cent of modern global warming. Cows and other livestock currently only emit about 100m tons of methane a year, according to a Daily Mail report.
"Cows today produce something like 50-100 [million tonnes] per year. Our best estimate for Sauropods is around 520 [million tonnes]," BBC quoted David Wilkinson, scientists at the Liverpool John Moore's University as saying.
"There were other sources of methane in the Mesozoic so total methane level would probably have been much higher than now," said Wilkinson.
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