Next Concern for Anti-Growth Groups: Being Overrun With Paleontologists

NOTE: based on some comments I received regarding this article, it appears some folks did not understand this was written tongue-in-cheek. It was hardly worth my time to write it; it's not worth your time to rebut it since I generally don't post comments to a post that was done completely tongue-in-cheek. We all have our myths.  Good luck to all.

Original Post

Bismarck Tribune link.

In addition to the world-class source rock for oil (the Bakken), it turns out North Dakota may have the best place to find dinosaur fossils.

Standing Rock's paleontology director Allen Shaw said what the tribe has in the remote setting along the river is like few others.

"A world-class eco system is preserved here," Shaw said. "I'd hate to say it's the best, but it's definitely one of the best places to find Late Cretaceous fossils, the last time there were dinosaurs on Earth."

Shaw took over the tribe's paleontology department two years ago, bringing experience and an endearing, almost boy-like wonder to his work.

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of edmontosaurus dinosaurs died on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Late Cretaceous Period, a mere 65 million years ago in geologic time, give or take a few million on either side.

I assume it's just a matter of time before the Feds step in to save the endangered edmontosaurus.

Oh, my bad, they're already extinct, one of the few extinctions that can't be blamed on man, I guess (if one ignores several other mass extinctions, including ones that wiped out nearly all life on earth).

I can't resist: one of the possible causes of mass extinctions being studied by scientists is the effect of sea-levels falling. From wiki:

Sea-level falls could reduce the continental shelf area (the most productive part of the oceans) sufficiently to cause a marine mass extinction, and could disrupt weather patterns enough to cause extinctions on land. But sea-level falls are very probably the result of other events, such as sustained global cooling or the sinking of the mid-ocean ridges.

It should be noted that global warming will raise sea levels, thus making mass extinction less likely based on this theory.

I can't make this stuff up.