Ancient climate change 'caused by dinosaur flatulence'

The link between air quality and climate change may seem like a contemporary occurrence, but new studies have found that dinosaur flatulence may have warmed the planet 150 million years ago.

Scientists from British universities have been testing the methane output of sauropods (some of the largest animals ever to live on land), including the species known as Brontosaurus, by scaling up the digestive wind of cows. They found that the population of dinosaurs as a whole produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually, which is to total natural and man-made methane emissions today.

David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moore's University, and colleagues from the University of London and the University of Glasgow published their results in the journal Current Biology. Mr Wilkinson said that it wasn’t the giant animals themselves that were of interest, but more the microscopic organisms living inside them.

He told BBC Nature:"The ecology of microbes and their role in the working of our planet are one of my key interests in science.

"Although it's the dinosaur element that captures the popular imagination with this work, actually it is the microbes living in the dinosaurs guts that are making the methane."

This work complements other studies that suggest the Earth was up to 10C (18F) warmer in the Mesozoic Era. Methane is one of the main sources of air pollution tracked today, and has been found to contribute to these higher temperatures. Additionally, livestock emissions have also been found to be a significant contributor to global methane levels, which prompted the new research into pre-historic climate conditions.

Their calculations were based on an estimated total population for dinosaurs, which was then used as a scale that links biomass to methane output for cattle. The figures far surpassed any expectations, and showed that methane levels in the Meszoic era would have been much higher than they are now.

Posted by Joseph Hutton