bobcat
Well-known Member
- Location
- Northern Calif
It was a warm humid world with no ice caps and in many ways nearly unrecognizable. It was like a tropic jungle or swamps with creatures of all shapes and immense sizes, and this went on for millions of years. Some flying creatures even had 30 ft wingspans. The oceans were biomass nurseries teaming with life.
Today, to produce one barrel of oil, you need roughly 10–20 tons of ancient organic material (mostly plankton). Now scale that up:
Humanity has used ~1.5 trillion barrels of oil, so that implies tens of quadrillions of tons of ancient biomass.
This isn’t an exaggeration — Earth’s oceans were biological factories for hundreds of millions of years.
What is now the US was actually two land masses with a 600 mile wide inland sea dividing them. Many states were actually underwater, and some depths may have reached 2500 ft. Here's a constructed map of what it resembled:
It's hard to imagine that reptiles like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and early sharks swam where Kansas is today. It's also hard to imagine that Nevada and Utah were prime dinosaur habitats that were warm and forested with lakes, swamps, and rivers. Utah has many dino museums displaying it's primitive ancestry.
Many petrified forests and fossil beds give us a clue as to what those regions used to be like. It's a real mind trip to imagine.
Today, to produce one barrel of oil, you need roughly 10–20 tons of ancient organic material (mostly plankton). Now scale that up:
Humanity has used ~1.5 trillion barrels of oil, so that implies tens of quadrillions of tons of ancient biomass.
This isn’t an exaggeration — Earth’s oceans were biological factories for hundreds of millions of years.
What is now the US was actually two land masses with a 600 mile wide inland sea dividing them. Many states were actually underwater, and some depths may have reached 2500 ft. Here's a constructed map of what it resembled:
The seaway covered Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and parts of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri.It's hard to imagine that reptiles like mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and early sharks swam where Kansas is today. It's also hard to imagine that Nevada and Utah were prime dinosaur habitats that were warm and forested with lakes, swamps, and rivers. Utah has many dino museums displaying it's primitive ancestry.
Many petrified forests and fossil beds give us a clue as to what those regions used to be like. It's a real mind trip to imagine.
