Oil sands digger uncovers dinosaur

Sigh, after the headline and first paragraph, the second paragraph's mention that it was a *fossil* dashed all my hopes. #LostWorldStillUndiscovered

I have seen these oil sand digs from the air. They look like the earth has erupted N 2 a ruinous, spasm of weeping, leprous, bleeding sores, wounds inflicted that have been inhabited or created by D most monumental vermicular life form since the debut of the Dune, Worms of Arrakis. They fill with water or affluent from the ever present industrial product used 2 remove the oil or fill with snow, that seems to melt at the edges of the ponds at which they take on the appearance of open wounds that are struggling to heal but the scabs cannot form due to some unseen irritant. All the time, I kept wondering what could these be turned into that would eventually reclaim them to some range of beauty or usefulness. They look like rows of pools linked by some subterranean vein that has contacted the floor of DEATH far beneath.
If the Earth,OUR Earth, had a voice, what would she say to us? "Can the Earth recover from this, I asked the geologist?" He LOOKED and said, HE SAID, "Can MAN?!"
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I hear that when the earth was all molten she was all like: "ZOMG... It burns!"
And when Super Volcanos killed off 90% of all living things she was all like: "Oh thank god for that, I needed to make way for the Dinosaurs."

The earth says nothing, you muppet.

The earth has changed form, land masses, weather, life forms, temperature, cloud cover, sea depth, CO2 levels, throughout it's entire life from molten nothingness to deeper than a nuclear winter, from lots of varied life to almost none and back again.
All this is natural in the sense that it's the same planet.

Go draw a circle the diameter of the length of a Basketball court with a ball point pen. The width of the pen line is the crust of this planet.

That is precisely how much any semi-sentient earth would care about your anthropomorphism.

And the average human lifetime is. . . . .how long?

In the U.S. the average lifetime is 80.4 years, just slightly ahead of Estonia, but far behind Japan, Spain, Switzerland, France, Austria, Korea, Israel, etc. etc. etc...

Such is America's failure as a nation.

In the U.S. the average lifetime is 80.4 years, just slightly ahead of Estonia, but far behind Japan, Spain, Switzerland, France, Austria, Korea, Israel, etc. etc. etc...
Such is America's failure as a nation.

Vendi - look at The US's immigration quantity per year and the nations they come from. They are old enough to immigrate or climb across the borders off that nation and where they came from...what was their life expectancy? They have been living for a while, had childhood shots? Good nutrition? Clean water? Tropical diseases once or twice? They may not meet the average life expectancy in their own native lands and come to the US and do a lot better! 80 years is NOT that bad when you have a steady flow in sizeable quantity from all over the world, think about it. Should Obama-Care survive its birth, the US could easily become the first nation to achieve CENTURY life expectancy for its people. None of the nations you named are proportional.Dig?
word-to-ya-muthas

I have seen these oil sand digs from the air. They look like the earth has erupted N 2 a ruinous, spasm of weeping, leprous, bleeding sores, wounds inflicted that have been inhabited or created by D most monumental vermicular life form since the debut of the Dune, Worms of Arrakis. They fill with water or affluent from the ever pres...Death far beneath blahblah

Hey why don't you try to write a happy poem gloomy guts? 'They bounty which mother earth has given it's children as displayed in the heroic excavations, recovered to use in the fulfillment of the wonderous dream of a great and prosperous civilization... as recovered from the barren subarctic wastes, heretofore of use only to the occasional marmot and grebe (loon?), today supply millions with LIFE-giving warmth and power, and thus to continue the Progress of humankinds journey to the stars...'

-Something like that.

The earth has changed form, land masses, weather, life forms, temperature, cloud cover, sea depth, CO2 levels, throughout it's entire life from molten nothingness to deeper than a nuclear winter, from lots of varied life to almost none and back again.
All this is natural in the sense that it's the same planet.
Go draw a circle the diameter of the length of a Basketball court with a ball point pen.

Yes, the Earth has seen changes, vast and powerful, but YOU have not. That was the Geologist' point. My concern for the Earth was as a human being who understands the true value of this living world, such a spectacular example of diverse life and environments. But we do NOT have to kill this world, send it through the kinds of changes you list to see life, especially human, disappear or become so well stripped of its technology that we beg for death on a living planet that can no longer sustain us. A world that has 'us' as its prize and pinnacle of development. We can do better.
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through the kinds of changes you list to see life, especially human, disappear or become so well stripped of its technology that we beg for death on jeebus holy corpse

Uh so how does mining oil sands do this exactly? Perhaps you would feel differently if you referred to them as surgical excisions rather than wounds? Would that sooth your fevered brow?

Hey why don't you try to write a happy poem gloomy guts? 'They bounty which mother earth has given it's children as displayed in the heroic excavations, recovered to use in the fulfillment of the wonderous dream of a great and prosperous civilization... as recovered from the barren subarctic wastes, heretofore of use only to the occasional marmot and grebe (loon?), today supply millions with LIFE-giving warmth and power, and thus to continue the Progress of humankinds journey to the stars...'
-Something like that.

Because, even the otherwise friendly European nations whose hunger for resources is truly great see a danger in the tar sands:http://www.thewil...lopment/
You can write all the poetry you want; there may be a problem W/tar sands!
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"
The earth says nothing, you muppet.

Yes...yes...I AM a "Muppet." Muppets are Famous, cheerful, endearing, cute, entertaining, sweet, loveable, fun-to-be-around and WEALTHY. They have millions and millions of fans and admirers, and based on your user profile, I AM a helluva lot smarter, and wealthier than YOU are!! Oh yeah...I am a muppet. And I was made as A big, BLACK and White, guitar-playing, PH.D, athletic muppet with a huge following among the ladies of this world...
Go-ask-ya-momma!

through the kinds of changes you list to see life, especially human, disappear or become so well stripped of its technology that we beg for death.

Uh so how does mining oil sands do this exactly? Perhaps you would feel differently if you referred to them as surgical excisions rather than wounds? Would that sooth your fevered brow?

Even now, many who doubted the data that cast contempt on a theory concerning the runaway carbon-based climate change and other emissions, have begun to think differently. Some facts are just plain disturbing. Facts that indicate a more callous attitude toward anything 'green.' As if recycling or cleaning the environment was beneath them or would take blood out of their veins. Further, the tar sand digs can grow quite large and here is what they do (please read links within the story as well!):http://www.nytime...ers.html
We CAN do better...Yes We Can...
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210, you really don't seem like a bad person, but I could not stand to be around you for any length of time.

Werd ta yur mammy

210, you really don't seem like a bad person, but I could not stand to be around you for any length of time.

Werd ta yur mammy

and...I DON"T CARE..taaDaaa! (But I am sure you knew I was going to write dat!!!)

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I AM a helluva lot smarter, and wealthier than YOU are!! Oh yeah...I am a muppet. And I was made as A big, BLACK and White, guitar-playing, PH.D, athletic muppet with a huge following among the ladies of this world...

pathetic

I AM a helluva lot smarter, and wealthier than YOU are!! Oh yeah...I am a muppet. And I was made as A big, BLACK and White, guitar-playing, PH.D, athletic muppet with a huge following among the ladies of this world...
pathetic

HA! HA! HA! HA! HA!...oh yeah...but please, don't hate!

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210:
you are anthropomorphising the planet in a way I find personally irritating.

I agree wholeheartedly that we have done terrible things to the planet, but the most remarkable thing is that "terrible" is another anthropocentric concept. It only makes sense to us. The planet on the other hand couldn't care less if we blow it up or what.

We need to understand that the stuff we see as terrible are probably at worth extremely wasted opportunities we will later look back on in shame.

I always wondered since tar and oil is basically dead creatures would an alien with super powerful computing ability be able to reconstruct the entire history of earth including dinosaurs, the first sea creatures and everything else if they could only examine the relatively low change products of 3 billon years of earths history. until now, when we dig it up, refine it and atomize it in our atmosphere for the tiny net gain in heat via chemical combustion.

All that HISTORY could be lost to us.

A marine reptile is not a dinosaur. Another imprecise headline from physorg.

and thus to continue the Progress of humankinds incredibly lonely journey to the stars...'

I for one would like to have a spaceship containing more than rocks and dirt and minerals when I'm ready to depart.

What do you think life alone on a perfect spaceship to be? Star Trek where they materialize their food. Their only meaningful interactions seem to take place on either a computerized simulator or encountering some preposterous alien life.

I see life in space as the moon or a giant man-made space ship and being able to go where I please regularly including a lush earth.

You people with your black hole creating experiments can do it somewhere not close to my forest home. Seriously 1-50,000 chance of ending the world are NOT good odds, people win the lottery all the time at much worse odds.

Anyways hooray on this tg day lets give thanks to the glorious oil companies for providing us with another museum piece which we will no doubt soon be a few exhibits down from.

Further, the tar sand digs can grow quite large and here is what they do (please read links within the story as well!):http://www.nytime...ers.html

As big as the lava fields out in Hawaii? Are they ugly or what? Oh you probably think they're beautiful because pele made them, and not people trying to earn a living.

And how about that mt st helens? What a mess huh? Who's gonna clean all THAT up? Maybe they could get it designated as a superfund site and get the EPA to do it.

210:
you are anthropomorphising the planet in a way I find personally irritating.

I see the value of a good home, this may not be an experience we share.
I see this planet as man's favored abode and NOT something we made or can use recklessly as if there were hundreds of them right-next-door-for-free! Or we can get on the web and order another one. The Earth, does not know our names, but it is the place where we are named, American, German, Greek, Jew etc, etc. Our world is ALIVE and we CAN kill it. Sure the mud-ball globe will still be here, but it has its potential locked tight inside our actions as well as in our DNA. We are utterly, physically of this world; As the seas cover our planet, in the same hope of life it fills our veins- it fills our VERY VEINS! Like a sprinting runner, as she circles the sun, she leaves a trail of 'sweat' vapor/atmosphere; As a world,she is modest, not a giant like mighty Jupiter, not a sweltering temptress like Venus, she is MOTHER Earth
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Further, the tar sand digs can grow quite large and here is what they do (please read links within the story as well!):http://www.nytime...ers.html

As big as the lava fields out in Hawaii? Are they ugly or what? Oh you probably think they're beautiful because pele made them, and not people trying to earn a living.

Tryin to make a living? Who gets out of bed each day and goes out to be or become dirt poor? I don't know anyone! Otto, now I am NOT an adherent of 'PC' so forgive me if I call it how I sees it! THEY can make a living digging those holes. I said in my original post, I have seen those holes, I was not there with the Salvation Army, God bless The S.A! Now, we can make money filling those holes..yes we can. It will cost everyone something but it IS the RIGHT thing to do...and you know it. Getting work and making money is Noble, and preserving our world and that which lives on it is DIVINE, truly. We can add jobs, good paying jobs,making love 2 this world!
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210:
I agree wholeheartedly that we have done terrible things to the planet, but the most remarkable thing is that "terrible" is another anthropocentric concept. It only makes sense to us. The planet on the other hand couldn't care less if we blow it up or what.
We need to understand that the stuff we see as terrible are probably at worth extremely wasted opportunities we will later look back on in shame.
All that HISTORY could be lost to us.

Otto, U can always just blow up your little piece of this world. If enough people think like you and do blow up their piece, anything that is left is equally damaged. "Wasted opportunities" you say? Oil is a resource, it has to be managed and its use has consequences and right now, its tar sand type consequences. The world just may have to slow or limit THOSE consequences because we may be doing irretrievable harm to our world. And just because you don't believe this, does NOT enhance the world's cool in this matter nor limit reality.
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210, you are so long winded and delusional.... Pls go back wherever you came from and stop being such a troll on physorg, there must be some other site that has ass backwards thinkers like you...

210, you are so long winded and delusional.... Pls go back wherever you came from and stop being such a troll on physorg, there must be some other site that has ass backwards thinkers like you...

Wha? Leave now? Now that you are here? And, just because YOU tell me too? Oh no, hell no. But, yes, there are other sites I frequent with people who think as I do, namely, MENSA and MEGA...you, well...cannot go to those sites without an escort and interpreter, some serious upgrades, and several billion years of HUMAN evolution...on a planet that has no guns, no chewing tobacco, and no one discovers narcotics, cheap cheap beer and no dating your relatives...ever!
(That should have been short enough...for you..)
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I have seen these oil sand digs from the air. They look like the earth has erupted N 2 a ruinous, spasm of weeping, leprous, bleeding sores, wounds

Yeah, but it's cool they found that fossil.

Sigh, after the headline and first paragraph, the second paragraph's mention that it was a *fossil* dashed all my hopes. #LostWorldStillUndiscovered

Yep, it's obviously a fossil. The title causes some misunderstanding, though.

"Oil sand digger uncovers DINOSAUR".

When I clicked the article, I thought they were talking about actual preserved remains (which would've been exciting, to say the least). Then I read the article and realized how stupid (and unrealistic) my previous assumption was.

From the perspective of a planet, "life" is simply a superficial skin condition. We have a very egocentric view of the universe because we are more intelligent than vegetables.
Some, such as writers of headlines, are *barely* more intelligent than vegetables, being unable to distinguish rocks from living animals.
One must develop Wisdom (= Intelligence plus Experience) to keep it all in perspective.

I see the value of a good home, this may not be an experience we share.

And I suppose the few people who may have lived where those mines now are, got a very good return on their homes. I would like to find oil in my back yard.

Our world is ALIVE and we CAN kill it. Sure the mud-ball globe will still be here, but it has its potential locked tight inside our actions as well as in our DNA.

This has me baffled. This is not even good poetry.

As the seas cover our planet, in the same hope of life it fills our veins- it fills our VERY VEINS! Like a blah

-and neither is that. Thank god it does not describe the world where I live. No, it is gutter philosophy bullcrap like this stuff which is why so many people are so detached from everyday reality.

The world is here for us to USE. To do this we have to scratch and burrow and make a mess sometimes. So what? You would have us all living in yurts forever until we were wiped out for good. No thanks. Stagnation is extinction.

I said in my original post, I have seen those holes, I was not there with the Salvation Army, God bless The S.A! Now, we can make money filling those holes..yes we can. It will cost everyone something but it IS the RIGHT thing to do

Why? What is wrong with holes? Go look at half dome in yosemite. Shouldn't we fix that? Look at the grand canyon. Should we waste time filling that back in??

Nature changes things all the time in catastrophic ways. Whatever we will ever do, cannot compare to that. You are deluded by your human-hating (misanthropy!) and your compulsion to make bad poetry out of it.

210, you really don't seem like a bad person, but I could not stand to be around you for any length of time.

Werd ta yur mammy

Racist. :)

Cave_Man-

You people with your black hole creating experiments can do it somewhere not close to my forest home. Seriously 1-50,000 chance of ending the world are NOT good odds, people win the lottery all the time at much worse odds.

Nice job COMPLETELY fabricating some arbitrary chance of the LHC destroying the world in order to make your viewpoint look more credible. Even if it did create mini-black holes, there isn't enough mass to maintain them for more than a femtosecond.

There's nothing wrong in extracting oil from sand as long as the sand comes out clean from the extracting machines and is put back where it came from, separated from the oily sand so that it doesn't become contaminated with oil again. It's pretty evident that there is a massive amount of oil BENEATH the sands that have seeped up. The oil doesn't go bad and is what is needed for heating homes, running cars, etc. What is the big deal? As long as the whole area is cleaned up of oil and clean sand replaces oily sand, there should be no problem.
The benefits outweigh the disadvantages in this case and that is money that will not have to be paid to OPEC. Instead, it will be paid to the workers in Canada to support their families.
The Earth is very forgiving as long as we don't make a concerted or deliberate effort to mess up the environment and not bother to clean up after ourselves. 80 or 100 years on this Earth may seem long, but it . . .only SEEMS. . .like a long time.

The title of the article should've been, "oil sands digger uncovers dinosaur bones".
Makes me think of the La Brea tar pits in California.

There's nothing wrong in extracting oil from sand as long as the sand comes out clean from the extracting machines and is put back where it came from, separated from the oily sand so that it doesn't become contaminated with oil again... As long as the whole area is cleaned up of oil and clean sand replaces oily sand, there should be no problem.

So now we are worried about how CLEAN the sand is which is buried 100 ft below the surface. Bwaaaahaaahaahahaha!

Here's a clue - oil is not 'dirty'. It is a naturally occurring mineral like quartz. Sorry if it offends your aesthetic sensibilities. Hahahaaa.

It's pretty evident that there is a massive amount of oil BENEATH the sands that have seeped up.

How could you possibly freaking know where that material came from, and what it has to do with anything?

...on a planet that has no guns, no chewing tobacco, and no one discovers narcotics, cheap cheap beer and no dating your relatives...ever!...

You really are an idiot. The drug alcohol is fine by you, but heaven forbid you ever have to have surgery on your narcotic free world, or develop cancer which can be incredibly painful, or any number of other extremely painful conditions.

Typical utopian thinking based on nothing but emotion and a complete lack of any comprehensive logic or reasoning. Add in the bragging and -word- and its really just pathetic. Do yourself and everyone else a favor - wake up and grow up.

210, you are so long winded and delusional.... Pls go back wherever you came from and stop being such a troll on physorg, there must be some other site that has ass backwards thinkers like you...

Wha? Leave now? Now that you are here? And, just because YOU tell me too? Oh no, hell no. But, yes, there are other sites I frequent with people who think as I do, namely, MENSA and MEGA...you, well...cannot go to those sites without an escort and interpreter, some serious upgrades, and several billion years of HUMAN evolution...on a planet that has no guns, no chewing tobacco, and no one discovers narcotics, cheap cheap beer and no dating your relatives...ever!
(That should have been short enough...for you..)
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LOL if you're a member of MENSA that doesn't say much for The Table.

-Turd

@Ghost. . . .read my post again if you have time. . .I NEVER said that oil is dirty and you know that. By cleaning the sand of oil, it accomplishes two things.
1) the replacement of sand (minus oil) back into the pit, and
2) oil (minus sand) that can be refined and used.
You are nit-picking. Start with your own head.

@Ghost. . . .read my post again if you have time. . .I NEVER said that oil is dirty and you know that.

What you said was:

There's nothing wrong in extracting oil from sand as long as the sand comes out CLEAN from the extracting machines and is put back where it came from, separated from the oily sand so that it doesn't become CONTAMINATED with oil again... As long as the whole area is CLEANed up of oil and CLEAN sand replaces oily sand, there should be no problem.

So - how often do you wash your hands in a day? Bwaahaaahaaaahaahaahahaha!!

hey aroc91 Nice job COMPLETELY being a moron, those were the odds given by physicists directly linked to the LHC

heres a quote:

These papers were widely used at the time to provide reassurance to the public and yet both later turned out to contain serious errors. The "comfortable margin of error" is actually a 1 in 5000 chance--not one that most people would consider comfortable. When this was pointed out, the team revised its figures by adding another zero onto the number making it a 1 in 50,000 chance, adding that "we do not attempt to decide what is an acceptable upper limit on [the probability of a disaster]."

The CERN group had mangled its numbers too. It turned out that their calculations merely suggested that there was a low probability that Earth would be destroyed very early on in a run at RHIC. In fact, their calculations were consistent with a high probability of planetary destruction over a long run.

Source: http://www.techno...id=27319

I await you imminent apology and complimentary fellatio, punk.

LMAO Cave_Man what physicist? The article you linked is authored by "kfc" which I'm assuming at least is someone's initials. Which physicist? Guess we'll never know.

The article just claims CERN made an error in the paper, and doesn't explain the error at all. Then it says basically "CERN just slapped an extra zero on there to make us feel safe, LOL!"

If the LHC were a danger cosmic rays would have consumed the Earth long ago. Look up the WOW! particle.

Lol you're a moron Cave_Man.

I have seen these oil sand digs from the air. They look like the earth has erupted N 2 a ruinous, spasm of weeping, leprous, bleeding sores, wounds inflicted that have been inhabited or created by D most monumental vermicular life form since the debut of the Dune, Worms of Arrakis. . . . nix blather . . .
If the Earth,OUR Earth, had a voice, what would she say . . .

Have you ever pondered a meteor crater, you dimwit?

One more step to understanding. Well done us humans, at least some of us are adding to our collective knowledge while our governments are burning the rest down.

Mr. 210 your comments are utterances in the wind. If you seriously think that man will shut down industry such as the tar pits for Divine Mother Earth, you are absolutely nuts. I live in Alberta, the tar pit province, know a lot of people who work in the industry and others related to it and know that what they are doing is in betterment of mine and, yes sir Mr 210, yours as well. Syncrude has always been aware of the environment - after all, it's the environment that provides them with their incomes - and takes precautions to try and maintain balance. I'm also a mother - as is Mother Earth - and I know what messes children can make. The people in Fort McMurray are playing in the sand and once they are finished, Mother Earth - as most mother's do - will clean up after Her children as She has done before with man's other playgrounds.

Mother Earth - as most mother's do - will clean up after Her children as She has done before with man's other playgrounds.

I suppose that's why she's cleaning up the CO2 dumped in our atmosphere, leading to Climate Change. I don't mean to be rude, but assuming the Earth will always clean up after us is, well, just an assumption.

after all, it's the environment that provides them with their incomes - and takes precautions to try and maintain balance. I'm also a mother - as is Mother Earth - and I know what messes children can make. The people in Fort McMurray are playing in the sand and once they are finished, Mother Earth - as most mother's do - will clean up after Her children as She has done before with man's other playgrounds.

Your whole comment suggests that no matter how much we fuck up our world, the Earth will always find a way to clean up our mess. In the future, she might just give up on us. So maybe we should continue to destroy it? Our only planet - and then we'll have nowhere to go. I'm thankful that the people who hold such ignorant views are only a minority.