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THIS DAY IN HISTORY (TDIH)
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LOCATION:
Saturday Evening Post USA
WHAT HAPPENED:
"Neodinosaurs",
written by Ivan T. Sanderson (1911-1973), first appeared in the
"Saturday Evening Post"
on this day (in 1948) under the title:
"There Could Be Dinosaurs":
" ...The very basis of science is a healthy skepticism -one, moreover, that should question the skeptic who denies the possibility of anything just as readily as it should question the benighted traveler who dares affirm it."
RESEARCH NOTES:
Although it was first published by the Saturday Evening Post on this
day in 1948, it was (as far as we know) published again in one of
Sanderson's books, that we actually use as one of our sources for
this event, "More Things".
It starts off with the phrase, "There has been a curious going-on in Africa for more than a century that needs airing," and then Sanderson explains how there actually is no such things as "dinosaurs, per se... lately, however, the term has once again swelled to include just about all extinct reptiles and the larger amphibians."
And, this was back in 1948. They still do that today, clump everything prehistoric under the term, "dinosaur". We don't personally object to it being use like that, if it gets kids interested in science. Personally, I think since the word "dinosaur" means "terrible lizard", that T-Rex reputation fits that description and he is a "dinosaur", but that's just my personal opinion. Sanderson also uses the term throught his article.
Anyway, Sanderson goes on about that for a long interesting paragraph, then starts in about how everyone thinks Africa is so modern, and that there is no longer a "dark Africa", meaning that there are no longer areas of Africa that were dark with trees and other vegatation. Short for, hard to travel through and explore properly.
He explains how that's not true. How HUGE Africa was. It's beyond comprehension unless you've been there.
We've never been there, but by looking at world maps, we can see for ourselves that it's huge. A rough cmparison between us told us it was more than half the size of Asia, and Asia is double huge. To us, it looks bigger than North America, and definitely bigger than South America and Europe, even if you combined the last two together. That's our impression, that it's huge.
Sanderson argues that until you can imagine how huge Africa is, it would be, "quite useless to suggest that there is not room in it for all number of things as yet unknown."
He then begins to make a case that maybe some dinosaurs still survive somewhere in the world. Africa's as good place as any for some to still be around. He then supplies a couple eyewitness accounts, and then explores the question, just how much of the Earth has actually been thoroughly explored:
"[p. 14, More Things] A notion has somehow gained popular credence that the surface of the earth is now fully explored and for the most part well known and even mapped. There was never a greater misconception. The percentage of the land surface of the earth that is actually inhabited -that is to say, lived upon, enclosed, farmed or regularly traversed- is quite limited. Even if the territory that is penetrated only for hunting or the gathering of food crops by added, vast areas still remain completely unused.[1]
We are now in the process of researching just how much of the Earth actually is uninhabited and/ or how much is used regularly, or inhabited, or just plain occupied. Let's get to the bottom of this notion that there is enough of the Earth left that is so unexplored that dinosaurs could still survive there:
LIVE (OFFLINE): 2014-09-28 11:12 PMT
It looks like, we'll have to go to the library to get a definitive
answer. We'll get back to this at that time.
2014-09-25 21:42 PMT
http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/Thoc/land.html (57,308,738 sq miles of land on the Earth)
"The total land surface area of Earth is about 57,308,738 square miles, of which about 33% is desert and about 24% is mountainous. Subtracting this uninhabitable 57% (32,665,981 mi2) from the total land area leaves 24,642,757 square miles or 15.77 billion acres of habitable land."
2014-09-25 21:08 PMT
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_many_acres_of_land_does_Earth_have
Now we're looking up how many acres of land there is on the Earth.
But first, let's say only 1% of that 96% were really remote enough
to actually sustain a hidden population of any kind. That would
leave us with less than 1% (or 0.0096551) of the land is remote
enough for our purposes.
"Answer 57,491,000 square miles: 36,794,240,000 acres," from the above link, but no source. For the sake of arguement and us this number of acres (36,794,240,000) and multiply that by 0.0096551 and you end up with 355,252,066.624 acres of the Earth remote enough to sustain a hidden species. That's a lot of land, three-hundred and fifty-five million acres.
2014-09-25 20:46 PMT
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_percentage_of_land_on_earth_is_dominated_by_humans [[.01 X 100/ .29, a match]
"29% of Earth is land mass. Of that 29% humans occupy less than 1% of that area. Of the remaining 28% about 40% is pure wilderness. 14% is true desert and 15% has desert like characteristics. 9% is Antarctica. Most of the remaining 22% are agricultural areas. There may be other areas with a human footprint of some kind."
29% (.29) of the earth (100) is land, and only 1% (.01) of that 29% is inhabited (which equals 3.448 percent of the Earth is inhabited. And if, 1% of the land is inhabited (or occupied), than somehow convert 1% that is occupied to the number that shows how much of the land is uninhabited (or unoccupied). First we need to convert 1% (.01) and 29% to a hundred percent (1.00). The equation we used is ".01 x 100/ .29" which equals 3.448% (or 0.03448). We then subtracted that number from 100 percent (or 0.100) and you end up with 96% (or .96551) of the land on the Earth is unihabited (or unoccupied).
2014-09-25 20:23 PMT
http://www.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_percentage_of_the_earth_is_inhabited_by_humans [.01 X 100/ .29, no source]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uninhabited_regions [checking sources, list of 52 unihabited areas are the only sources]
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080317205737AAgywUN [7-11% (including the oceans) is inhabited, no source]
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/10/1025_021025_HumanFootprint.html [Interesting, 83% is quoted here, no sources though]
http://www.quora.com/Geography/What-percentage-of-Earths-surface-is-inhabitable [No help, switching to inhabited]
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110218070622AAlbnoX [No help]
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_much_of_the_earth's_surface_is_habitable_by_humans [15%, no source]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_uninhabited_regions [pictures, but no numbers]
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
[1] Pages 5 and 11-24 from
More Things
[2] Page 72 from
Strange and Unexplained Physical Phenomena
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