Let's talk dinosaurs
Offline ...It's sucky that they went extinct. 
Sauropods were the largest land herbivores ever to walk the Earth (the largest measuring some 33 meters from head to tail, and weighing-in competitively with the blue whale at some 35 tons), while Theropods were the largest carnivores (Tyrannosaurus being the most notorious - though not quite the largest - at 13 meters in length and perhaps 7 tons heavy).
There are two big questions for me when it comes to these titanic animals:
A) Were it not for the K-T boundary impact event (and subsequent extinction of all of the large dinosaurs), would we have evolved? If there is complex life on other worlds, is it perhaps more likely that we might find some analogue upon inspection to our prehistoric world rather than an analogue to our mechanized world?
B) Is it plausible that perhaps we might be able to 're-make' a population of dinosaur analogues, based perhaps on remnant DNA tampering or the discovery of preserved prehistoric dinosaur DNA? Or is that just more or less strictly fictional nonsense?
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
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Getting into what-ifs almost always needs a defintion of the kind of what-if else the answers are trivial.
If you go back far enough you get the butterfly effect as portrayed (poorly but dramatically) in the movie by that name. If a different sperm from your father reached your mother's egg you would not be here. Given the millions of sperm against a single successful one, if you father sneezed an hour before love making a different sperm would have most certainly won the race. Given the millions to one odds it is reasonable to say ejaculation a second earlier or later and you would not be here.
Once you get your head around that, even the most trivial change in human events two thousand years ago would have resulted in the world population being composed of entirely different people.
Would we have evolved? In the particular sense of you and me personally, of course not by the sneeze principle.
In the more general sense of we as homo sapiens, of course not. Mammals did not take over until after they were gone.
If you mean some intelligent, self-aware species, no way to even guess. Evolution has no goals, no objectives and no direction. Intelligence does not give any survival advantage until some point smarter than the other ape species in the world. How intelligence got started is more important than being smart. What we do know is that the route to our kind of intelligence is so rare there is only one example of it in the 4.5 billion year history of the earth. Estimate all the multicelled species ever on earth and the odds are still greatly against it. Estimate all the land species over 50 pounds ever to exist on earth and the odds start getting down to the range of winning the lotto or being struck by lightning.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
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It boggles my mind that guys that big could live on a vegetarian diet!
I would rather not buy a ticket for Jurrasic Park.
I would love to have a full grown T rex as a pet. Can you imagine sicking it on a group of "gangstas" and watching it tear through them and their stupid pit bull dogs. Bling bling your ass, mother f**ker
, say hello to my new pet, Fluffy....mwa ha ha ha haaaaaa ! 
The largest species are always vegetarians. We would have a lot of starving predators were they not. Although most predators live off of game smaller than themselves prey has an evolutionary pressure to increase in size. That gives the predator a pressure to grow also.
To reconcile the problem, there are real vegetarians and human vegetarians. There is a huge amount of energy in leaves and herbaceous stems. We cannot digest them and the few we do eat like celery and lettuce are also called ruffage.
Beyond that we have no baseline for how big is big. How about hours per day eating? For herbivores it is just about every waking moment in the wild. For omnivores like us and carnivores an hour maybe in the actual eating.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
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Well, not necessarily. Bear in mind that the filter-feeding whales (including the blue whale, the largest animal on the planet) are, essentially, carnivorous (eating primarily Krill).
Well, if you will, I'm sort-of welcoming trivial discussing into this thread. I mean, dinosaurs are awesome. Anyone who wants to shoot the wind about it with me is welcome.
That's sort-of what I'm getting at. We know that mammals didn't really catch-on until after their demise - but was it necessary? Or could mammals, given sufficient time, have evolved right alongside them just fine?
Well, we should remember: remnant DNA 'collects' as junk in all organisms. Is it reasonable to expect that we could use that one day to reconstitute an extinct population? Or not?
Uh. Bird blood doesn't have deoxyribonucleic acid? Are you sure?
- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940
Well taken but the second example is ...? Elephants today, mastadons and mammother back then. New world today bison, elk and caribou. New world back then even bigger bison, armadillos and even beavers with even dire wolves and sabertooths eating them. Wolves and cats larger than today but still smaller than the prey.
If the former is the sneeze principle this is the influenza principle. Way too many things would have been different for the line of evolution between lemurs and us to have been the same. For example lemurs lived in trees. While there were dinos mammals were rarely larger than a large rat. I think the largest species known is described as the size of a badger. Never having seen a badger that means little to me but I presume that is smaller than Lucy. Thus even to get started in our direction our ancestors would have been the largest mammals ever to exist and still get much larger. Size alone is one credible stopper for anything like us appearing.
Frankly there isn't too much else we can say with any certainty was in the path to us. So we can talk but in the end it would be piling speculation on top of speculation. So lets go to the intelligence thing.
The other apes among us are the next smartest animals on dry land. All of them have limited habitats and none of them are dominant in those habitats. It takes an intelligence greater than theirs before it makes a noticable contribution to survival. Sure it is an aspect of survival but not observably better than slashing claws or razor teeth.
Now add the entire range of dino species to their environment. If dinos are related to birds then they had reflexes some 50% faster than those of mammals. As it is they say our DNA shows we were almost wiped out a couple million years ago even without dino help.
If I were betting on an intelligent species arising in a dino world I would bet on velociraptors. Something in the 50 to 100 kg range that first becomes omnivores. While I like the idea of the K'zinti the author got very nebulous whenever he got near their evolutionary path not only to a technological society but to intelligence.
That sounds good on paper, but in what order do these little fragments go and into which chromosomes? How much "junk" DNA is between them and how do we know which is good and which is junk and where do we get the right junk?
Last I read it doesn't. The cells that produce the blood do. Nor is bone marrow the blood producing organ. I think it is the liver but that is pushing my memory. Blood cells do not divide. Having DNA is a waste of energy but it has to be wasted to get blood cells.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
The Kodiak Brown Bear. There are no moose on Kodiak, so the kodiak brown bear is the largest animal on the island (and a very large island it is). In the arctic: polar bears, seals, and walrus are the largest critters, and they are all carnivores. Polar bears eat the seals, and the seals eat fish.
Those are the ones with which I am most familiar.
I want a miniature apartment T-Rex.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Avian erythrocytes are in fact, nucleated. You're probably thinking of the mammalian variety, which bud off from their mother cells sans nucleus and get destroyed in the liver after several rounds of circulation. In any case, any vertebrate's blood is teeming with DNA. White blood cells are nucleated and must be able to divide so that they can respond to infection. About 1% of a healthy human's blood is white blood cells, each with a full chromosomal compliment. I used to extract DNA from whole blood at my old job, and we got pretty good yields without going to a phenol step for recovery.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Yes, folks, there is more than one thing involved in pushing the size of a predator and in predator/prey size ratio.
Temperature is one of them. I agree a polar bear is large compared to its prey. In this case I have no idea how big it would be if the fat and the extra bone and muscle to carry around the fat were removed. In other words, move it south. And the amount of fat is determined by the pre-hibernation amount required to survive the winter not the amount in the spring. Of course the same would go for seals.
But in the bear case there is another factor, they are omnivores like us. With carnivores all bets appear to be off on size. The non-animal part of the diet is not a predator/prey relationship.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml
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are you no good stinkin nerds debating about now? I have seen geeks, and I have met a few nerds in my time, but you guys take the cake. this thread sounds like a couple of little kids arguing over whether Anakin would beat Luke Skywalker in real life combat.
Wow! That's a good question. Tough, though, I mean, what does one gauge his response on: Physical powers? Keen detection skills? The ability to banter well with super villians? Or even...
It doesn't really matter. My T-Rex would eat them both as a light snack.
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Well, if I understand things right, just before the big extinction event, we were very small rodent like critters, and we were having significant evolutionary trouble because we didn't process oxygen as efficiently as the dinosaurs. Whether that would have permanently stunted our evolution is hard to say. I certainly don't have the background to make an educated guess.
Intelligence is just another selectable trait, and I don't know if it's possible to say if dinosaurs had survived whether or not one or more of them would have developed "higher intellect." Makes me think of that episode of Star Trek where Kirk has to fight the lizard man... Something that's been tugging at my brain for a while now is the fact that humans are not unique in our propensity to destroy our environment. We're just really numerous and we live in pretty much every environment on earth. All animals "want" to overpopulate, which leads to habitat destruction. I wonder if a dominant non-intelligent animal could ever achieve the number of species extinctions humans have caused. Food for thought...
I don't think it's very realistic, but I'll let DG or DDA have the say here. Maybe they're making more progress than I think on sequencing DNA from the ground up.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
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WTF are you talking about? We're talking biology here, not fictional characters. Y'know, the stuff that gives us cures to diseases and stuff: biology.
Now, run along and enjoy your very important football game. After, you can talk about the stats of the players and whatnot. That sounds very important.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Ha ha , Nigel
actually spanked a troll !!!
It seems so out of character for him, it's almost like seeing some serenely calm Budhist monk suddenly fly into a rage and kick someone in the nuts for being an asshole. Go Nigel !
Uhm... get your sciences straight. Archaeology is the study of past civilizations from their remains. Paleontology (part of biology) is the study of past populations of organisms from their remains. Evolution (which is also being discussed here) is a very, very large part of every part of biology.
Animals such as T-Rex have been dead for over a hundred million years, not simply "hundreds of thousands." Yer off by an order of magnitude, Chief.
Also: we know a surprising amount about the dinosaurs. We know even more about the passenger pigeon (extinct), the great auk (extinct), and the dodo (also extinct). So your final statement is also curiously ignorant.
And finally: so we're talking about silly things concerning important topics. It's better than talking about silly things concerning silly topics (such as sports or TV or celebreties or what-have-you). Sometimes silly conversations can lead to greater understanding of the topic, such as Kevin's question about recreation of extinct species a la Jurassic Park.
So again, this is nothing like a discussion concerning a couple of poorly-acted characters in a series of poorly-written movies.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Err isn't that what you were doing just a few posts ago?
I am an Ex-Christian.
Hey Chief. We don't know you; Nige is an established member and contributor. You've made three posts total. If you continue to display this defensive behavior, especially in the FA forum, then don't whine when you get the ban hammer. Odds are you don't fit in here anyway.
"The whole conception of God is a conception derived from ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men."
--Bertrand Russell
Of course. I was simply responding to your overly-general statement, "you or anyone else for that matter knows very little about a TREX or any other extinct animal." I believe these extinct birds fall under "any other extinct animal." I'm happy to see that we are in agreement that we know much about many extinct animals.
And you wouldn't call me "you clown" to my face. I believe that makes us even.
However, I might very well call you "chief" to your face. I love archaic terms of condescension, and often use them in ironic and non-ironic ways. And, I'm not easily intimidated.
Agreed. That would be ridiculous.
I'm sorry if I misinterpreted you in any way. I thought it clear in the last post that you were referring specifically to the extinct animals under discussion, which were dinosaurs. Perhaps that's because you said, "You are talking archaeology, not biology, and the supposed habits, diets, mannerisms, and lifestyles of animals that have been dead for hundreds of thousands of years..." which seems to indicate the animals under discussion were extinct for hundreds of thousands of years.
I apologize for the misunderstanding.
If by "jest" you mean, "in the spirit of a drive-by insult," then I agree. My posts are offered in the same spirit. Actually, I only posted the first one because I thought it was funny, and the second because you took the first so seriously. It's funny you would say something about "typical internet punk talking crap," as that's exactly what your first post was, whether or not it was "in jest."
[EDIT addendum]
Kevin,
I apologize for the thread derail. I shall refrain from responding further to zipzagger in a non-topic-related way.
"Yes, I seriously believe that consciousness is a product of a natural process. I find that the neuroscientists, psychologists, and philosophers who proceed from that premise are the ones who are actually making useful contributions to our understanding of the mind." - PZ Myers
Did you come here to start a fight? Let me make this abundantly clear. You were the first to piss on this parade, and you look like you have no plans but to be a tool. I'm feeling an itchy trigger finger today, and don't feel like dealing with this kind of nonsense. Cut it out and play nice or I'll send you out the door. This is your only warning.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism