# Question about the atmosphere - in the time of the dinosaurs

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-atmosphere-in-the-time-of-the-dinosaurs/460945>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [August 22, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-atmosphere-in-the-time-of-the-dinosaurs/460945 "2008-08-22T17:49:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Don\_Draper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b2d939/32.png) [@Don\_Draper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Don_Draper)\
**Post date:** [August 22, 2008, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/question-about-the-atmosphere-in-the-time-of-the-dinosaurs/460945/1 "2008-08-22T17:49:43Z")

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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! 🙂 )