February 15 (UPI) – Each year, the Arctic tern moves from pole to pole, flying thousands of miles in a matter of weeks. Species as small as dragonflies and as large as gray whales swim and fly from continent to continent in a few months.
According to a new study, it took the largest raspberry dinosaurs in the world, Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus, about 15 million years to travel across the supernatural Pangea, from present-day South America to what is now Greenland.
The new research, published Monday in the journal PNAS, reveals that climate-related barriers were due to slow pace.
Only with the help of a 2 million year drop in atmospheric CO2 did the dinosaurs get their turn, researchers found.
Scientists knew Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus they enjoyed a wide range, but so far, the timing of their propagation throughout Pangea was unclear.
By comparing the magnetic names captured in fossil site rocks in Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada and elsewhere, researchers were able to block the timing of their migration. from south to north.
Researchers were amazed by how long it took the dinosaurs to get from South America to Greenland.
“In principle, the dinosaurs could have walked from almost one pole to another,” study lead author Dennis Kent said in a news release.
“There was no ocean between them. There were no big mountains. Yet it took 15 million years. It’s like snails being made faster,” said Kent, a supplementary research scientist at a ground observer Lamont-Doherty at Columbia University.
If those plant-eating dinosaurs had covered just a mile a day, the journey would have taken less than 20 years – instead, it would have taken 15 million.
When researchers compared the timeline of the slow journey with old climate charts, they realized that the timing of the migration corresponded to a significant reduction in atmospheric CO2.
Scientists are estimating the reduction in CO2 that has resulted in a more climate-friendly result, removing climate barriers that made long-distance travel impossible.
At the beginning of the Triassic, CO2 levels accumulated 4,000 parts per million, ten times today. As a result, large, very dry regions of Pangea appeared to be boxing in. Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus.
Bands of tropical ecosystems, steeped in monsoons, may have blocked travel, forcing dinosaurs to live within the warmer region of what is now Argentina and Brazil. .
“We know with higher CO2, the drier and the wetter the wetter,” Kent said.
Researchers estimate that as CO2 levels have declined, tropical areas have dried out slightly and deciduous areas have become slightly wetter. As a result, Brontosaurus and Brachiosaurus they may have felt a compulsion to move – climate barriers no longer hinder their path.
The route from South America to Greenland may have been marked by a series of long rivers and stretches of lakes – a high path of climate change wrapped up with a drop in CO2 levels – said the researchers.
“When they got to Greenland, they looked like they had settled in,” said Kent. “They were hanging around like a fossil record long after that.”