How many dinosaurs could live in Central Park? or, Taking another look at abiotic oil
James Farlow asked the question, “how common were the giant dinosaurs?” His conclusion is, “a square kilometre could host only a few full-sized sauropods with mammalian metabolisms.” http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19312-how-many-dinosaurs-could-live-in-central-park.html
In his study, Farlow looked at a region that contained not only sauropod remains, but fossilized plant life. This permitted Farlow to estimate how much food was available for Jurassic herbivores to eat.
But wait a minute. This is the same biomass that, after aeons of compression, became oil and came rushing out of BP’s Louisiana Macondo well at extreme pressures from a well depth of 17,909 feet (5459 meters). If Falwell is correct that a square kilometer harbored only enough biomass to support a few sauropods, then where did the biomass come from to generate oil? To put it another way, if we know how much biomass is needed to support a small colony of sauropods, how much biomass is needed to produce a single barrel of oil? And where is the evidence of this biomass?
It’s true that Falwell’s calculations were taken from only one site. But it is unlikely that the distribution of biomass was such that in some places there was only enough for a few dinosaurs, while in others, there was enough to support millions.
If Farlow has correctly answered the question of how common were dinosaurs, he has also disproved the “petroleum hypothesis” and shown that oil is not a fossil fuel.
