Many, many, many years ago, I read a book on dinosaurs that called into question many common assumptions about the Thunder Lizards. (Were they truly cold-blooded? Were T-Rex’es really that fearsome, or were they more like scavengers? Etc.) This would have been circa the late 1970s or early 1980s. I cannot for the life of me remember what the book was called.
One of the things that the book pointed out (which I admittedly only vaguely recall) was that the plant-life typically excreted higher concentrations of methane than oxygen. Or something like that. I took that to mean that the Earth’s atmosphere was significantly different, so that if in a scenario like the Ray Bradbury story “A Sound of Thunder”, people actually could go back in time, they wouldn’t be able to breath the air. Was this a correct assumption?
Just curious, but if any paleontologically* inclined dopers out there know the answer, I’d appreciate hearing from you.
*(I’ve been dying to find a way to work the word ‘paleontologically’ into a converstaion for a long time! )