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Oxygen Helped Mammals Grow, Study Finds

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posted on Sep, 29 2005 @ 02:52 PM
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Paul G. Falkowski of Rutgers University and colleagues have released a study that the growth that mammals have enjoyed for over the last 205 million years is a direct response to the increased levels of O2 in the Earth's athmosphere.
During the dinosaur age, the Earth's air only contained about 10% oxygen.
About 50 million years ago the O2 levels had increased to 17% and then about 40 millions years ago, the O2 levels had reached it's present level of 23%.
Oxygen Helped Mammals Grow, Study Finds





WASHINGTON - Mammals, once tiny creatures scampering on the forest floor, grew larger as the amount of oxygen in the air increased over millions of years, a new study says.
Today mammals, ranging from dogs and cats to elephants, dolphins and people, dominate the planet.

It's a success story Paul G. Falkowski of Rutgers University and colleagues say was helped by the more than doubling of oxygen in the air over the last 205 million years. Their findings are published in Friday's issue of the journal Science.


This is fairly interesting to me but leaves me to question some of the previously thought findings.one carbon dating itself. Since Carbon dating is based off of the radioactive decay of Carbon13 (14). Since these are by-products of living organisms, would not the amount of free CO2 and Nitrogen not throw off the previous determinations of the age of various findings?
Or am I missing something here?



posted on Sep, 29 2005 @ 03:01 PM
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I don't think it would affect carbon dating; however, it really doesn't matter. Carbon dating is good for only thousands of years, not millions.



posted on Sep, 30 2005 @ 12:37 PM
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This is really a no-brainer and nothing new. Oxygen is a lot better oxidizer than most other compounds, so it was a natural step in evolution.



posted on Sep, 30 2005 @ 02:48 PM
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Oxygen gas is one of those things that, as it turns out, is a good sign that life wouldn't exist on a planet. Once you pass that "Hey, look! Primordial Soup!" stage of life, it comes in handy. Complex life (obviously, it seems) depends upon it. An increase would, for the most part, help that life grow. Muscles could become more powerful and useful, so you could hunt further and for longer. You could think faster, react faster, pump blood faster, etc.

We might have messed things up with greenhouse gases lately, but Oxygen is eventually toxic. I wonder if we would've ever hit that point.




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