Does Oil Come From Dinosaurs? Geologist Addresses Myth Gasoline Is From Decomposed Velociraptors

Have you heard the rumors that oil comes from dinosaurs? There are speculations that that is the case, but an expert says otherwise.

Oil From Decomposed Dinosaurs?

There's a widespread belief that oil is from dinos, with some joking that you pump refined Velociraptor at a gas station. However, an expert shut down the myth, saying it was unlikely.

"For some strange reason, the idea that oil comes from dinosaurs has stuck with many people," geologist Reidar Müller from the University of Oslo explained to Science Norway. "But oil comes from trillions of tiny algae and plankton."

When plankton and algae perished tens or hundreds of millions of years ago, they descended to the sea's bottom, where they gathered and became buried under layers of silt. The algae and plankton eventually "cooked" and transformed into that sticky black oil we seem addicted to, even in the face of a climate emergency, after millions of years in a high-pressure, low-oxygen environment. From here, it seeps upward until it encounters rock that it cannot get through, necessitating the drilling out of it by people.

While aquatic dinosaurs, or a T. rex, which wasn't very well suited for swimming, would find themselves on the ocean floor after they pass away, it's unlikely that they would be transformed into oil.

This is partially because organic materials cannot be converted into oil without an oxygen-deficient atmosphere. Long before they could have been buried, they would have been consumed by smaller aquatic animals, who would have picked them apart until they were just bones.

Clare Goldsberry also shared the same opinion. According to her, "petroleum is made from aquatic phytoplankton and zooplankton," not dinosaurs.

The speculation about oil coming from dinosaurs was widely accepted. Sinclair Oil Corp. sponsored a dinosaur at the Chicago World's Fair "on the premise that the world's oil reserves were formed during the Mesozoic era, when the dinosaurs lived," according to Bob Strauss. Due to the exhibit's popularity, Sinclair acquired a large, green brontosaurus as its official mascot.

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Neglected Dinosaur With Outstanding Sense of Smell, Balance

Willo, a neglected dinosaur overlooked at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, had a unique skill. It can reportedly smell a drop of blood from miles away. Thescelosaurus neglectus had very well-developed olfactory bulbs, giving them a smell similar to alligators, which they might have used to find hidden plant nutrients.

They also shared a trait with burrowing animals - a perfect sense of balance that allowed them to pinpoint their precise location in three dimensions.

While it had an excellent sense of smell, it had a little hearing range. Only 15% of the frequencies that humans can detect and 4%-7% of the frequencies that dogs and cats can see were audible to T. neglectus, so they had difficulty hearing high-pitched noises.