Which Was Worse for Soil: Combines or Dinosaurs?

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Misslizard
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30 May 2022, 11:12 pm

The dinosaurs did leave droppings to enrich the soil, combines don’t.
Maybe there were giant earthworm type creatures that kept the soil aerated and friable.If they were soft bodied ,with no skeletal sutem or exoskeleton ,maybe there is no physical evidence they ever existed.
Just think of the size of a dung beetle back then. :D


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kitesandtrainsandcats
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31 May 2022, 12:53 am

Now that was unique.
And quite interesting.


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naturalplastic
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31 May 2022, 3:52 am

Interesting.

The American prairie supported herds of tens of millions of bison. Bison are big, like a ton each. But not as heavy as the modern wheat combine. The prairie was replaced by the modern wheat belt that stretches from Oklahoma to southern canada. So what was the prairie that was trod upon by the bison is now "compacted" by modern wheat combines.

Its hard to imagine a world without grass, but oddly enough grasses did not evolve until late in plant evolution. Grass only appeared at the tail end of the Cretaceous. So for most of the 130 million years that dinosaurs existed there were no grasslands, no pairies, and savannahs. Just forests or deserts. So the dinosaurs were not exactly doing the same thing as either wheat combines do or that the bison used to do. They were not grazing fields of grass, nor mechanically 'grazing' fields of wheat (which is a domesticated type of grass), but eating off of trees, and giant ferns.Would that make a difference? I dunno. But as MissL said the dinos would have laid down 'organic fertilizer' as they went. And maybe dung beetles would work it into the soil and uncompact the soil.



magz
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31 May 2022, 4:08 am

And there were no prairies in dinosaur times, for yet another reason:
Image


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magz
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31 May 2022, 4:24 am

Quote:
If agricultural equipment now poses a compaction risk, the dinosaurs were almost certainly causing problems. At the same time, however, animals of that size required a flourishing ecosystem to support them. "The potential for significant soil compaction by foraging sauropods seems incompatible with productive land that supported renewable vegetation for feeding these prehistoric herbivores," as the researchers put it.
I see a simple explanation to it: evolution of sauropods to get that big took plenty of time. In the same time, their ecosystems evolved, too.
The exact mechanisms are yet to be learned but evolving together, the ecosystems developed tolerance and/or resistance to soil compaction.
Which is not the case with harvesters - but humans surely can invent something to adress it.


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