Adventure Ausrama Blog

Australia has always been seen as remote. Yet new new things are being discovered about its history. It has been identified as the "target" of one of the world's largest asteroid impacts. Two craters found by Andrew Glikson and his team are thought to have been caused by a large meteor which broke into two pieces. Each crater is 200 kilometers in diameter. One of these craters on its own is larger than the impact in Mexico: the Central American collision wiped out the dinosaurs. It isn't the biggest, however. The Sudbury comet did a great deal of damage, but the world's widest crater is the Vredefort in South Africa. The twin craters in Australia have been flattened out over eons of time. They were found by geothermal research. It appears that asteroid impact covers the Northern Territory, Queensland and South Australia, a very large area. Seismic traverses is going to be applied next. This will hopefully bring new things to light. If the as...

You may stop fearing an asteroid colliding with the Earth. Man himself could be the cause of the next mass extinction. People who harp on about climate change being a religion and an article of faith are like those who ignored Noah. Remember that humans got down a few hundred individuals in the past. We are very lucky to be here today. Of course the world would have gone on without us: it would be a very different world. There would be no pollution anywhere. Ebola is out of control. Antibiotics are failing. A world-wide plague could be on the cards. Danger to Man is not the only issue. Twenty five per cent of mammals could soon disappear. Forty per cent of amphibians are at risk. Because species are already dying off, a mass extinction could have already begun. The hottest decade on record shows that life is declining. When animals die off the food supply for other creatures also goes. So the path of extinction of predator species becomes real as well. Carbon is the...

The mystery of why dinosaurs evolved feathers has been solved. Observation of ostriches shows that wings are used to retain balance while running. Far from being evolutionary leftovers, they are used constantly. This finding was made by breeding ostriches that were "human-friendly". Then they were then able to be tested, which took place when they were three years old. The ostriches were made to run down a 300 meter "track", indoors. They were seen to zigzag, brake and turn, guiding their bodies using wings as rudders. Tests showed that feathers provided lift which improved stability. All living flightless birds are able to evade capture by quickly turning one way then the other. Without wings they would not be able to do this. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/AdventureAustralia http://www.technorati.com/blogs/http://adventure--australia.blogspot.com . . . . . . ...

Australia is a very old continent. It seems the ancestors of Tyrannosaurus rex lived here. A hip bone has been found that dates to 110 million years ago which is 40 million years before T.rex roamed elsewhere on earth. Until now it was believed that T.rex only lived on northern continents. Many of the things stated as fact by scientists are indeed just matters of faith until they are "proven" otherwise. Scientists argue about when dinosaurs developed feathers and why. They claim that birds today are direct descendants from dinosaurs. This is like saying humans are descended from dinosaurs. Much evidence points to birds having a line of descent completely separate from dinosaurs. The same rings true with the Hobbit people of Flores Island. Some scientists will not accept that people different from humans survived until 18,000 years ago alongside humans. Neanderthals lived until 50,000 years ago, so why not another type of human? Science is much like religion. What is just ...

The largest animals ever to roam the Earth were sauropod dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous eras.  They did not eat meat.  Despite having to constantly eat grass and leaves the heaviest reached 50 tonnes. The periods going back from the present are Cenozoic, Cretaceous, Jurassic, Triassic and Paleozoic.  The last four are grouped into the Mesozoic era.  It is in this general broad time frame that the gigantic dinosaur arose and died off. Though for the most part these creatures walked with their heads in an horizontal position, for feeding it is presumed that they reached up vertically to feed on young branches and leaves high in the trees.  Other herbivores could not reached up to this rich food source.  Mammals had not yet risen.  Giraffes appeared much later. Having plenty of food meant the sauropods could evolve and become very large.  Their bones were light and with a small head the neck became long.  They swallowed fo...

If an asteroid hadn't collided with the Earth 65 million years ago we would not be here today. Reptiles would still probably rule the world and apes would never have evolved. There was so much devastation after the impact that only small animals survived - very small mammals. These small creatures only came out into the open to take over the world when it was safe after the dinosaurs had gone. Mankind's development actually depended on the dinosaurs existence. Small animals evolved to give birth to live young so dinosaurs could not eat their eggs. Even giving milk to their young was to avoid the danger from dinosaurs. Becoming warm blooded allowed them to hunt at night which dinosaurs could not do. After the dust had settle it was a virtual paradise for mammals. The sun came out and they basked in it. A niche for large animals was vacant so mammals grew large and were successful. The climate changed and trees disappeared. Large mammals grazed happily until an intelligent a...

Ancient dinosaur tracks may be destroyed by gas companies moving into the Kimberleys. In the Dampier Peninsula near Broome more than 15 different kinds of dinosaurs foot prints are "embedded" into the landscape. They are in 130-million-year-old sandstone. Woodside plans to open up the area for natural gas development. Just bringing people there opens up the tracks to damage. Arguments are raging all over Australia at the moment between natural gas companies and farmers who fear damage to their pasture from polluting chemicals used in the search process. Companies can just open a farm gate, drive in and start drilling - no permission is needed. New dinosaur footprints are being found at the Kimberley site, notably of the very large sauropods nearly a meter in diameter. The varied prints are in different layers. They have been laid down over an extended period of time. Woodside is saying better quality tracks are found well away from their intended development an...

Dinosaur metabolism was not only higher than reptiles, their bodies ran at a faster rate than mammals. Analysis of tiny holes in their bones shows that they pumped a lot of blood through their bodies. So scientists have been wrong for a long time claiming that dinosaurs were slow moving creatures who relied on the sun to get going each day. Tests across a wide range of dinosaurs, big and small, confirm they moved around with ease. Some scientists have accepted the hypothesis that dinosaurs were not reptiles. It makes one wonder how many other things we are taught at schools are totally wrong. New evidence for upright walking of apes goes back more than four million years to an animal with feet designed to climb trees. Their hips are clearly designed for walking upright. And for decades we had been told a special foot design was necessary for bipedal walking. http://www.adventure--australia.blogspot.com/ http://www.tysaustralia.blogspot.com/ http://www.feeds.feedburner.com/Adventu...

A dinosaur with a head remarkably like modern crocodiles has been found in Australia. It didn't walk on all fours though. It stood upright on two legs like a T. rex. In the Cretaceous 146 million years ago they wandered over most of the Earth. This is the first time they have been found so far south. It seems this group of dinosaurs, spinatosaurids, were really mobile. This find confirms that all dinosaurs travelled long distances populating great area of the planet. The fossils were overlooked since they were found in the 1990s. Paul Barrett of the Natural History Museum London was examining samples at the Museum of Victoria. He noticed that the vertebra was the same as Baryonyx walker i a long clawed spinatosaurid found in Europe. A new look at other dinosaur specimens showed examples in old Gondwana which included Australia and Laurasia, so millions of year ago different species of dinosaur lived alongside each other right across the globe. At the end of the Cretaceous the land ...