THE CAUSE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

DID DINOSAURS CAUSE CLIMATE CHANGE?

Huge creatures may be to blame because they produced so much flatulence, say scientists.

Dinosaurs may be partly to blame for a change in climate because they created so much flatulence, according to leading scientists.

Professor Graeme Ruxton of St Andrews University, Scotland, said the giant animals spent 150 years emitting the potent global warming gas, methane.

Large plant-eating sauropods would have been the main culprits because of the huge amounts of greenery they consumed.

The team calculated the animals would have collectively produced more than 520m tons of methane a year - more than all today's modern sources put together.

It is thought these huge amounts could easily have been enough to warm the planet.

One of the animals, a 90-ton argentinosaurus, which measured 140ft in length, would have consumed at least half a ton of food in one day.

After breaking down in the animal's stomach it would have produced thousands of litres of the greenhouse gas compared with a modern cow which only produces 200 litres of methane daily.