I see the science journal Current Biology published a paper a few years ago on a subject that was treated years before by … the Minnesota Fringe Festival. First, the paper:
Mesozoic sauropods, like many modern herbivores, are likely to have hosted microbial methanogenic symbionts for the fermentative digestion of their plant food [1]. Today methane from livestock is a significant component of the global methane budget [2]. Sauropod methane emission would probably also have been considerable. Here, we use a simple quantitative approach to estimate the magnitude of such methane production and show that the production of the ‘greenhouse’ gas methane by sauropods could have been an important factor in warm Mesozoic climates. [“Could methane produced by sauropod dinosaurs have helped drive Mesozoic climate warmth? ” Wilkinson, Nisbet, and Ruxton, Current Biology, Vol 22 No 9]
In other words, dinosaur burps and farts may have brought about climate change back in the Mesozoic (252 to 66 million years ago).
And what about the Fringe? I recall, many years ago, attending a show called Fartosaurus Rex, involving a Tyrannosaurus Rex realizing the injustice of killing and eating herbivorous dinosaurs, pledging to go vegetarian, and the resultant gas raising local temperatures, thus destroying the dinosaurs of the time.
Yep. No kidding. The moral lesson was a trifle muddled. Maybe it had something to do with the consequences of meddling with natural law.
Someone even interviewed the lead character:
It was all a bit much. But my Arts Editor did like the talking butte.
