If fossil fuels are made from old dinosaurs, would it be possible to find DNA in the oil(or coal)?
145290
>>>>If fossil fuels are made from old dinosaurs...\n\nIt isn't so we can stop this right there. Fossil fuels are either made from  plants and marine algae or the result of geological processes. \n\nNo Dinsosaurs were harmed in the making of fossil fuel.
151670
Yes natural gas is a type of fossil fuel.  Other examples of fossil fuel are oil and coal
817681
Yes, it has DNA. A fair amount of DNA sequenciing has been done on DNA from a frozen mammoth. Researchers have also been able to assemble the complete sequence of the mitochondria.
690789
No i would respond by questioning the molecular construction of a trilobite and whether it could be dated to a pre jurassic age or whether it was just another anomaly from the mariners trench in the pacific
784871
Well, maybe a little, but if they have it, it is really old and altered.  Below is a link to the geologic map.
464166
Yep.  Fossil fuels burn because they have carbon and organic substances in them.  Carbon = organic life; thus all petroleum must be derived from living substances.  Sure, other things burn that are not derived from living things; but not petroleum.
1055635
It formed of dead bodies of plankton million years ago, found in certain rock formation called reservoir. Produced by drilling an oil well and gathered into surface facilities. Separated from its impurities (sediments and water), it transported mostly by pipeline to the refineries. The refineries extract the crude components at each weights to make various type of fuel such as gasoline, kerosene, diesel oil and so on. Crude oil composed by carbons and hydrogen that so called hydrocarbon. Hydrocarbons constitute a very large group including alkanes, alkenes, and alykynes.\nIt's non-renewable energy resources.
262290
planksheer, again you have hit the nail on the head. Good job, guy.\n\nNecessity is the mother of invention.  If suddenly ALL oil vanished from the face of the earth, we would have another form of energy to replace it in a VERY short time.  And, of course, the oil companies would try to gain control of it.
6477
All fossil fuels are formed by decayed plants and animals. Oil, gas, coal.
967532
They can't, actually, not without mixing it with another creature. Because all cells come from cells. You'd have to put the dino DNA into a modern reptile cell. And it does matter, because it is cellular machinery that brings about gene expression - and that can have a huge effect on gene expression. (epigenetic inheritance) So you would not really know what trait was dinosaur, and what was artifact from expressing the genes in a modern reptile cell. \n\nStill and all, it would be fun, I agree!
850328
First off sedimentary rock is necessary for oil and gas formation. A known anticline (hill shaped folding),  is necessary for the entrapment of the oil and gas.  The rock needs to be old enough for the oil and gas forming to occur. Your not going to find alot of oil in gas in quaternary or tertiary rock. I live in an area known as the Bradford oil field and the rock age here is mainly Devonian. \n\nMany paleoentologists are being employed these days in this field of oil exploration. A core or test sample is drilled and brought to the surface and from the fossils found a determination can be made if this is a possible site for oil. (2 cent version)
103003
There will be other energies. Only way we will run out of them is if the powers that control them (Oil men in many countries) say to. "Fossil" fuels themselves may not even be quite what we think they are.
199749
oil is the result of decayed organic material (dead plants and animals).  there would have had to have been life, LOTS OF IT, on the moon at one time, some sort of atmosphere at one time to promote both life and decay, some catrosphic event or chain of events would have had to happen to remove all evidence of both because to date there is evidence of none of these.   so....probably not.  besides, oil on the moon wouldn't matter unless we colonized the moon.  it would be too expensive (and currently impossible) to get it, pack it and bring it back safely.  there is no space craft to date (or anything near) that would be big enough to bring it back.  \n\non the other hand, they have considered putting some sort of fuel repository on the moon, much like the international space center, so that once a space craft has expended the enormous amount of fuel necessary to achieve escape velocity to get into space, it could land on the moon, fuel up and go a LOT further with a lot less fuel. there is no gravity or wind resistance in space, so you point in a direction give your engines a little boost and you could theoretically go for ever in that direction assuming you don't hit or get hit by anything or fly into the gravitational pull of any other planets or stars.  interesting stuff huh?\n\nwww.m-w.com   merriam websters definition of fossil fuel, which oil is\n\nMain Entry: fossil fuel\nFunction: noun\n: a fuel (as coal, oil, or natural gas) that is formed in the earth from plant or animal remains\n- fos·sil-fueled  /-"fyü(-&)ld/ adjective
1166752
From Wikipedia:\n\nMost geologists view crude oil, like coal and natural gas, as the product of compression and heating of ancient organic materials over geological time scales. According to this theory, it is formed from the decayed remains of prehistoric small marine animals and algae. (Terrestrial plants tend to form coal.) Over millennia this organic matter, mixed with mud, is buried under thick sedimentary layers of material. The resulting high levels of heat and pressure cause the remains to metamorphose, first into a waxy material known as kerogen, and then into liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons in a process known as catagenesis. Because hydrocarbons are less dense than the surrounding rock, these migrate upward through adjacent rock layers until they become trapped beneath impermeable rocks, within porous rocks called reservoirs. Concentration of hydrocarbons in a trap forms an oil field, from which the liquid can be extracted by drilling and pumping.\n\nGeologists also refer to the "oil window". This is the temperature range that oil forms in--below the minimum temperature oil does not form, and above the maximum temperature natural gas forms instead. Though this corresponds to different depths for different locations around the world, a 'typical' depth for the oil window might be 4 - 6 km. Note that oil may be trapped at much shallower depths, even if it is not formed there. Three conditions must be present for oil reservoirs to form: a rich source rock, a migration conduit, and a trap (seal) that concentrates the hydrocarbons.\n\nThe reactions that produce oil and natural gas are often modeled as first order breakdown reactions, where kerogen breaks down to oil and natural gas by a large set of parallel reactions, and oil eventually breaks down to natural gas by another set of reactions.
510420
The primary fossil fuel is coal-Including the oil sands, crude oil is next, then natural gas.\nEstimate coal is about 1 trillion tons, which is about 30 X 10^21 joules 30,000 exajoules of power.  This is estimated to be enough for at least a century, and perhaps more.\nEstimated oil is about 1 trillion barrels, which is about  or 6500 exajoules of power-this will start getting pretty tight in the next 20-50 years\nEstimated natural gas is 150 trillion cubic meters, or about 6000 exajoules-this is the hardest to estimate, since not as much work has gone into finding natural gas fields-this will be increasingly more important as a replacement for oil, but is more expensive to transport and store.  If the low estimate given is correct, it should last sometime beyond 50 years.\n\nSo, those of us sitting here are probably ok- It's our kids and grandkids that are set for some serious problems, unless we figure out some new sources for them.  Humans generally have a decent record in planning ahead-with some dramatic exceptions, but nothing on the scale of dealing with the two big problems- Global weather changes and depletion of energy sources.
1086584
In terms of geology, millions of years. Much of the current coal and oil in the ground was raw plant material in the Cretaceous. \n\nTime, Sediment, more Sediment and more time. \n\nHowever, \n\nIn a study a couple years ago, A scientist at the UIUC took organic matter (pig poop) and created a "feedstock" from it in the lab. \n\nEssentially through a Thermo-Chemical Conversion he took raw sewage and created a product which go into the crude oil processing for refining. Mind you this process and study is in it's infancy but the implications are dramatic. \n\nWe can now or will in the not to distant future convert animal and human waste products into a biomass feed source for fueling everything from automobiles to airplanes. \n\nThere are companies today that are gleening natural gas from landfill gases. These processes may be able to make cities less depend on purchasing expensive Natural Gas. Also in CTL/GTL processing conversion of natural to petro feedstock is being done through a process engineered by the 1930-40s Germans. Fischer-Tropsch refining of natural gas is coming into it's own..
310677
Bones contain cells, osteoclasts and osteoplasts.  I remember a colleague doing studies on ancient camel bones to look for genetic variation.  So, yes, DNA can be extracted.  Usually it's so fragmented though.  Maybe DNA can be obtained, maybe not.  This level of technology may be beyond us yet still.  We are talking of something that is hundreds of millions years old, not just a few thousand.