British researchers are now hypothesizing that due to their
plant-based diets, dinosaurs' flatulence may have produced
enough methane gas to warm the earth during the Mesozoic era,
from about 245 million years ago to about 65 million years ago.
The long-necked, gigantic dinosaurs, averaging a weight of
44,000 pounds and referred to as "prehistoric cows" allegedly
disposed of 520 million tons of methane emissions per year,
according to scientists' educated guesses. "A simple
mathematical model suggests that the microbes living in sauropod
dinosaurs may have produced enough methane to have an important
effect on the Mesozoic climate," researcher Dave Wilkinson of
Liverpool John Moores University said in a statement, as
reported by MSN. "Indeed, our calculations suggest that these
dinosaurs could have produced more methane than all modern
sources – both natural and man-made – put together," Wilkinson
said. Sauropods' heavy diet of large leaves helped contribute to
their high methane emissions, as methane-produci