Sam,
Although as children we were taught that oil came from dinosaurs, I don’t think serious geologists ever meant for the story to be taken literally.
Plants and animals are made from pretty much the same stuff (mostly Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen), which breaks down and reforms under certain conditions into the hydrocarbons that comprise oil. There are about 550 gigatons of life on Earth, of which 450 gigatons are plant and just 2 gigatons are animal. It should be clear that only the tiniest of tiny fractions of oil could have come from dinosaurs.
In fact, the main contributors are believed to be algae and plankton. Sinclair Oil sold us on the dinosaur story more because it’s a lot more fun to think of their company’s product that way than is the truth. I mean, dinosaurs are COOL! Sinclair oil is COOL! Plankton and algae? Not so cool.
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This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by
Decomposed.