What died to make all that oil?

To the editor:

I have a question about fossil fuels, which have been talked about in recent letters to the editor. If fossil fuels are a non-renewable energy sources that formed more than 300 million years ago during the Carboniferous Period -- long before dinosaurs roamed the earth -- what plants and animals died in the terrain of the Middle East to produce the oil?

ANDREW OSTROWSKI, Fort Worth, Texas