2004 Column Archives
Pro and Cons of Dinosaur Flatulence
By John Sammon
Feb 1, 2004, 12:50

Dinosaurs once ruled the earth. They also stunk the place up. No wonder people didn?t make an appearance on earth until 70 million years later.

Scientists say dinosaur flatulence, or gigantic farting, caused a warming of the earth?s atmosphere from the expulsion of the methane gas contained in your average fart.

Only this fart was emitted by an animal that consumed 3,000 pounds of food per day and weighed perhaps 80 tons.

Can you imagine standing downwind? It would be like Mount St. Helens on its worst day. Would this clear your sinuses or what?

They apparently farted nonstop. Talk about heavy natural gas.

We shouldn?t fault dinosaurs. People do it too, just on a smaller scale. Cattle, sheep and other livestock, as well as more exotic animals like emus and iguanas, also cut cheese today (from fermenting foliage the animals graze), contributing to the ?greenhouse effect,? a trapping of hot, silent but deadly air in the earth?s atmosphere. This in addition to all the chimneys, factory smokestacks and car tailpipes of our modern world.

But if dinosaur farts once caused global warming, there must have been pros and cons.

First of all, global warming causes temperature changes which likely caused plant change, which maybe got rid of dinosaurs. This is a pro because it gave us bones to dig and study, movies to make like Jurassic Park, and Barney the kid?s TV show. If dinosaurs still lived, they would cause all sorts of trouble, wandering into our yards and stepping on our houses, interfering with our golf courses and freeways. Can you imagine hitting a brontosaurus in your town-car? Talk about insurance rates.

A pro is that while dinosaurs were warming up the foul air, they also caused the greatest proliferation of tropical plants in history. Potheads can only dream about the possible hullengenic qualities of a 50-foot poppy.

Then again, it must be seen that if you lived during this period, if a dinosaur didn?t eat you and blow what was left out its backside, you probably would have slipped on the biggest lizard paddy of all time----a con.

What about fire? Imagine the impact of all that methane gas with a spark. Remember that meteorite that supposedly knocked down all the trees in Siberia in 1901? That wasn?t a meteorite. That was the last T-Rex letting loose after a lightning strike.

You could light a cigarette and blow up Cleveland. Definitely a con.

One little known pro is the possibility that the hole in which Lake Tahoe sits wasn?t carved by glaciation as previously thought, but by three duckbill dinosaurs who ate a bean field and then stood too close to a forest fire. The resulting explosion would have registered 9.5 on the Richter scale.

A similar prehistoric event happened at the present site of the US Congress Building in Washington DC.

Unfortunately, hot, foul air continues to emanate from that spot.