Ophiolite

Invertebrate fossils are abundant. Some rocks are 99% composed of fossil invertebrates. Typically complete invertebrate specimens are found - this is much less common for vertebrates and there are many orders of magnitude fewer fossils. It is quite common to find invertebrate fossils in the spatial relationships they were in in life - this gives great insight to their ecology. This is rare for vertebrates. I would be surprised if this were true. The prime means, after the Law of Superposition, of relative dating of sediments lies in its invertebrate fossil content. So apart from the intrinsic interest of each fossil family there is the need to understand these for stratigraphic purposes. Further, using the ecological insights from invertebrate study, coupled with detailed sedimentological information we can more readily define ancient environments. As a rather informal and potentially inaccurate assessment of the number of vertebrate versus invertebrate palaeontologists one could google both terms in, say, Bing and Google scholar. This shows a preponderance in favour of vertebrate, which seems to support your assessment. However, I think if we searched by phyla, we might find a swing in the other direction. Certainly my university had numerous inveretebrate paleontolgists and zero vertebrate paleontologists, but anecdotal evidence isn't of much value. Exactly. The general public are unaware that in the last two decades the average length of a drill bit run in the oil and gas industry has increased by an order of magnitude, yet without that change gas would be even more expensive than it is. (This is the field I am now in.) The same applies in palaeontology. It is invertebrate work where much of the really important stuff that seems mundane ot outsiders happens. In the early days of geology stratigraphers made the simple assumption that a given rock bed of a particualr lithology, extending far geographically, was the same age wherever it was found. Later it was realised that since environments of deposition migrated that a particualr bed could represent different times. Such a bed is said to be diachronous. The work I was referring to, which I am recalling dimly from over four decades ago, was able to identify this diachronicity and subtle change sin ecology from the mix of fossils found in the bed. In a given locality we can readily distinguish hundreds of layers that represent seasonal, or longer time intervals. There are typically marker beds that allow correlation from locality to locality. (Ash beds are a very good in this regard.) The lithology itself, through structures, texture, geochemistry and mineralogy tell us about the environment so we can identify abnormal conditions. Has this been done for every location and every age? No. But it has been done in more than enough cases to be as confident as one can be that we are not missing anything globally along the lines you have proposed. I would say it is both. There is no evidence for it and in those instances where I have looked (and I concede it is not an in depth look) I find evidence that it is not the case. I would like to be able to summarise that evidence here, but it is not clear cut. I was looking only to satisfy myself, either way, not to prepare to convince others. However, if you care to suggest some specific examples I think I could find the data to demonstrate why the idea won't work.

I would have thought that these symptoms: were a perfectly reasonable response to these conditions: In other words life can be confusing, frustrating and sometimes overwhelming. Getting professional advice will be a good way to set your mind at ease.

There are several ways in which you are a winner. For starters, you have communicated your situation with great clarity and considerable eloquence. Look at some of the posts on this forum to see what a real loser looks like. You have had the intellect to identify aspects of your life you are unhappy with. Cowards hide the truth from themselves, winners do what you have done and recognise their problems. You have had the courage to share these weaknesses with the world. Ignore the fools who say the internet is an anonymous place, when you open your soul to view as you have done, it does not feel anonymous and only a winner could act so. In sharing your pain you may already have helped other to feel less alone, isolated and different. That is the act of a winner. Start by recognising these and other ways in which you are a winner and soon you will start to win in some of the ways you feel are important.

You should google Maslow's Heirarchy. It should resonate with you.

Several. One of them is called seismology.

All the other numbers were taken.

Which is why I congratulate him on his imagination, but tried to demonstrate the area where the facts are against the thesis. I've also given him a lifeline with the Martian dichotomy. If he pursues this he won't prove his thesis, but he'll learn a lot.

How much teaching does he do, or is he almost entirely engaged in research? Either way if he enjoys teaching your task is simple. Explain that you wish to share your enthusiasm for the subject , as exhibited by your passion for research, with others, through the medium of teaching. What would he recommend you do? Can he help you in this goal? He may very well have contacts with other institutions and be willing to speak on your behalf.

I think this is what you are referring to. It is also discussed here. The preview of the Nature article can be found here. Keep in mind how this hypothesis was arrived at. The peculiarities of the chemistry of lunar rocks, their similarities and differences with Earth rocks, the age of events on the moon, the lunar structure, all led to the conclusion that the proto-Earth was struck by a Mars sized planet. Some of the material from the collision later coalesced to form the moon. Detailed computer simulations using finite element analysis confirmed this was possible and even allowed us to estimate the size of the impactor and the angle at which it struck. We were still left with the oddity of the difference between the two hemispheres of the moon: the far side has no significant 'seas' to speak of and a thicker crust. This latest hypothesis is an attempt, using computer simulations again, to demonstrate why this is so. The point is that key features of the Earth-Moon system are explained by the large impactor theory that are not explained by your suggestion. Intuitively one suspects that what you have proposed would not be dynamically possible, or certainly very much less likely than the current theory. That means you would have a huge challenge to demonstrate your idea was plausible. Would you like to detail how that explains the character of Phobos and Deimos? The current explanation that they are captured asteroids seems reasonable. Leader Bee has explained why the timing of this event simply does not fit the timing of the formation of the moon. This is simply evidence that Mars was once much wetter than today. It does not provide any evidence of a collision. (If you want that sort of evidence you might consider the Martian crustal dichotomy.) This is perfectly adequately explained by asteroids impacting Mars and ejecting rocks into space some of which drift towards the Earth. Now if your idea was correct these rocks would have spent billions of years in space before falling to Earth to be discovered. Yet we can tell from the isotope chemistry of the rocks that they have been in space for only a few million years. This, in combination with the other issues, invalidates your thesis. It was an imaginative idea, but the facts are against you.

What if you don't want inner peace?

Do you have any plan to answer the questions, or address the comments I made in post #3?

This is nonsensical, ill informed, infantile garbage. 1. There is no such thing as 'special relativity measures'. 2. 186,000 miles most certainly does not equal a light year. 3. You switch between a number associated with the speed of light expressed in miles per second, to a precise number associated with the speed of light in kilometres per second. 4. You refer to a dimensionless number as if it had units attached. 5. Correcting for some of these converts your sentence to the following: the speed of light doesn't work at the speed of light. 6. Then, perhaps dimly aware of conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics, you throw in a meaningless reference to the latter. You pack all that ignorance into a single sentence: quite an accomplishment. If you are serious about being taken seriously please stop writing like a manic typist on LSD. Organise yout thoughts. Write grammatically. Cheack what you have written. Justify claims. Structure your argument. Currently you do none of these things and in consequence you come across as a fool.

Please contact me by pm with your bank details so I can lift my winning bet.

When one is unable to distinguish between the possibilty of skillfull troll or the mentally ill it is arguably time to close a forum thread.

No, it most definitely isn't. Why did you choose to post such a nonsensical statement? Too much alcohol?

It seems quite adequate to say Newton, Lorentz, Maxwell, etc.Wherein do you find that inadequate? Faulty logic. If you are using the Earth as an example then it seems it takes 4.5 billion years for intelligent life like humans to evolve. The universe is thought to be 13.5 billion years old, so the oldest intelligent life would be no more than none billiion years old, younger than what you have proposed. (There are further complications relating to the absence of metals in the early universe from which to form planets.) I am not aware of any thing such as the energy of pure thought. Please direct me to information about it. In lay terms this may be true, but it makes no sense in scientific terms. (Nor did your remarks about the differing fields of force of the elements.) If it is imagined then how can it be a real force? Personal space is a consequence of the neurological and psychological character of humans. It has nothing to do with a kind of force field of space. If you wish to argue that it does please provide evidence. You have it the wrong way round. Are there any thoughts or evidence to support the theory? Based on what you have presented so far the answer is a resounding no.

Allowing this self indulgent lunacy to remain in speculations, with no effort to post even a smidegeon of evidence, surely is wrong. Is gross sutpidity not more at home in the trash can?

They are good questions for vetebrate palaeontologists, perhaps, but for the majority of palaeontologists they tend to the irrelevant and wrong. I am somewhat mystified by the obsession the layperson has with dinosaurs. No! Not mystified, disgruntled. The majority of palaeontologists have no difficulty undetaking ecological studies and have been doing so for many decades. There are well established techniques for establishing whether we are dealing with an assembly of animals that lived together or were brought together after death. Even fifty years ago researchers could identify diachronous horizons and assess how the community had changed over time in parallel with the changing geography. (If you are interested, I think you could reference the work of Hallam in the UK, circa late 1960s.) I am confident techniques today are much more refined and discerning. As to your example of Triceratops and T-Rex, frankly I have no idea as to the extent of their temporal or geographic overlap. However, species or genera known by more than one or two specimens are seen to live over an extended period of time. Overlap would be relatively easy to identify with confidence. Very many things about our techniques would need to wrong for your thesis to be valid. Around three or four years ago it occured to me that if global extinctions, similar to what we are currently seeing did occur in a short time frame, then they might be difficult to spot in the fossil record. However, despite reasonably serious literature searching I could find nothing to support the notion. Your ideas seems quite similar, it just doesn't seem supported by the evidence.

Exactly. Beanieb has reached the faulty conclusion that only allopatric speciation can occur and only when there is total, extended isolation. Cichlids in the East African lakes have been shown to speciate in 10,000 years or less, despite still being in the same lake as their parent species. I think his difficulty may be is that he is thinking that speciation is something that happens to an individual rather than a population.

I would vote to keep it open for its entertainment value. Or do you feel that would be cruel? Perhaps you are right.

Thank you Arete, unfortunately I do not have a subscription to Science.

No. You are mistaken. You are under the false impression that isolation has to be geographic. It does not. It can be geographic, it is often goegraphic, but there are other options. I believe I already pointed these out, but you seemed to have missed them. The isolation may be behavioural. A mutation may lead to a creature spending more time on the forest floor than in the canopy, for example. Initially there will still be interbreeding between groups, but more inbreeding within groups. This will concentrate the different genes in their respective groups and increase the amount of separate behaviour. Or the isolation could be one of sexual selection. There is no issue with some interbreeding occuring. It seems that at least some humans have Neanderthal DNA. The two species lived alonside each other for a time, interbred occassionally, yet still remained distinct species. I believe there has been a recent case of speciation of chiclids where the two groups are living in the same place, but have different behaviour patterns. I shall try to find you a reference for this instance.

I think you might be underestimating people here I think he might be accurately estimating his powers of explanation.

I'm not going to fall for that one.

I cannot understand what you are saying. The language is clumsy and ambiguous. Even carefully reading and rereading individual sentences to determine their meaning does not work. I recommend you get someone who speaks English to help you rewrite this.