🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi,

The current issue of Scientific American has an excellant article on the
extintion matter.

There have been extinctions of small and large scale every 26 million years
since fossil records began in the precambrian epoch.

Sometimes the extinctions appear instantaneous, other times they occur over
millions of years.

There is a new hypothesis about the dinosaur extintion that the impact of a
large body into Earth would spatter superheated matter over a vast area of
the planet. This with the fireball would superheat the atomospheric gases
and ignite fires over 90% of the planets surface. Soot has been found in the
iridium layer in several sites around the world.

The article also points out that the 26 million year periodicity meets 
roughly with the rate at which the solar system moves through the arm of our
galaxy and some correlation is plausible.

The current rate of extintions is remarkable. The exact numbers escape me 
but are on the order of 1 per hour in the Amazon region. We ARE in one of
the largest extinctions in the planets history.

The largest extinction was one in which 90% of the oceanic life died. That
particular extinction was hypothesized as caused by environmental change.

What the article points out (and the Shuttle photos of the Amazon I just
received) is that the current burning of forests and coal are making species
drop like flys. The effects are not reversible.

PS: those photos of the Amazon fires have to be seen to be believed. The
smoke covers the ENTIRE BASIN, from the Andes in Columbia and Peru to the
ocean and isle of Marajo. Look at a map for these places to see how large
an area we are talking about. In one of the photos is a detailed close up
of one fire plume estimated to be the size of all the Yellowstone fires
combined - but this Amazon burn is for clearing purposes! The smoke is so
dense over the basin that the sky probably can't be seen from the ground.
Perhaps in the outer regions one could see the ball of the sun, but I'd bet
you wouldn't have to squint.




-- 
Tim Margeson (206)253-5240
PO Box 3500  d/s C1-022                          @@   'Who said that?'  
Vancouver, WA. 98668
e-mail replies to: timothym@tekigm2.MEN.TEK.COM