Dinosaur Extinction? Page 2

Started by Massacre. December 11th, 2010 9:50 AM
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Livewire

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I find it funny that the Maya were in Yucatan and predicted something in 2012 and that an astroid hit there a long time ago that ended life or the dinosaurs...
Well sometimes the Mainstream is wrong but you are right there is lots of proof for it...but I wonder why birds didn't die out...I mean small dinosaurs should have survived as mostly small animals survived this big extinction...unless the small dinosaurs all evolved into birds thus ending the dinosaur line...but still other big animals did survive...
Speaking of extictions there were tons of extictions before the dinosaurs...actually 90 something % or so of all life that ever lived on earth at any time is said to be extinct...
Well Birds first surfaced during the Jurassic, in the form of Archeopteryx, so it really wasn't a traditional "bird" as we know it. They evolved later. But remember, the extinction was gradual- Dinosaurs still lived, died, and evolved for a little bit after the KT event 65 MYA. So in a way, they survived, just as birds instead.

There really weren't many large land vertebrates left after it. Small mammals and birds that lived very frugally survived, because quite frankly, the planet was a wasteland after the KT event.
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Well Birds first surfaced during the Jurassic, in the form of Archeopteryx, so it really wasn't a traditional "bird" as we know it. They evolved later. But remember, the extinction was gradual- Dinosaurs still lived, died, and evolved for a little bit after the KT event 65 MYA. So in a way, they survived, just as birds instead.

There really weren't many large land vertebrates left after it. Small mammals and birds that lived very frugally survived, because quite frankly, the planet was a wasteland after the KT event.
True, the only big animals I can think up that survived KT were water animals such as the Crocodile...
The sad thing is that if another KT like event were to happen only small animals would survive and we humans would die out (we are fairly big compared to the mammals that survived the Kt)
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True, the only big animals I can think up that survived KT were water animals such as the Crocodile...
The sad thing is that if another KT like event were to happen only small animals would survive and we humans would die out (we are fairly big compared to the mammals that survived the Kt)
Not so fast there MRAS. Our numbers would certainly be decimated (in a way more people dying could help our species) and civilization would cease to exist how we know it but to our core Humans are determined, stubborn and adaptible species. I think we'd survive, what we know today as life probably wouldn't but some humans would find a way. People in Russia, for example, would probably be fairly unaffected by the impact itself but would suffer through the aftermath, something that we have to intelligence to do.

But the key is that a large amount of our species dies out and only a small percentage survive. Life on earth would be decimated, including our food supply, so numbers wouldn't exactly equal a good thing. Humans are inheritently greedy, but who wouldn't be to survive?
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Rich Boy Rob

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But the key is that a large amount of our species dies out and only a small percentage survive. Life on earth would be decimated, including our food supply, so numbers wouldn't exactly equal a good thing. Humans are inheritently greedy, but who wouldn't be to survive?
The most important thing is that those that survive would be those resistant to the factors that killed the rest of our species and in the terms of an asteroid, that would (disregarding our smooshiness when hit by several mile wide rocks) be the cold. Something that reptiles aren't very good with, being cold blooded 'n all. This would mean that we would start to evolve to be better suited to the cold, likely retracing our evolutionary steps in the form of fur. Either or as well as that we would also presumably be made up of those from developed countries, as we would be more able to shelter from the dust/cold.

In any case, we wouldn't last long as a species (in terms of Homo Sapiens) as we would probably be superseded by our evolutionary cousins nieces and nephews. Although there is always a chance that those who could simply survive out in the cold could just split off as a separate, but parallel species to the scientifically minded Humans.
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Not so fast there MRAS. Our numbers would certainly be decimated (in a way more people dying could help our species) and civilization would cease to exist how we know it but to our core Humans are determined, stubborn and adaptible species. I think we'd survive, what we know today as life probably wouldn't but some humans would find a way. People in Russia, for example, would probably be fairly unaffected by the impact itself but would suffer through the aftermath, something that we have to intelligence to do.

But the key is that a large amount of our species dies out and only a small percentage survive. Life on earth would be decimated, including our food supply, so numbers wouldn't exactly equal a good thing. Humans are inheritently greedy, but who wouldn't be to survive?
Well the dinosaurs in different continents died as well so I think the same will happen to man kind...but that's just my own little theory...
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Well the dinosaurs in different continents died as well so I think the same will happen to man kind...but that's just my own little theory...
The dinosaurs lived in a fairly warmer earth and as Rich Boy Bob hinted on, weren't able to deal with the resulting cold. Not too mention the hit plant life would take from the changing weather thus giving plant eaters nothing to eat which in turn gave large predators nothing to survive on. This is all relative to the size though. An asteroid the size of North America would certainly spell our doom. :P
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Kung Fu Ferret

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The meteor is most likely.

I think cloning Ice Age beasties is more likely than cloning dinosaurs.
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Cloning ice age beasts is more likely then the dinosaurs, but not
by to many magnitudes. To clone anything we would need a intact
chain of a DNA molecule. However DNA is very weak, as far as
molecules are concerned, and start to break down very quickly after
death. One would need a sample that had been frozen almost
immediately right after death occurred and to have stayed that way
for hundreds of thousands of years, as well as finding an animal to
serve as a surrogate. So while ice age creatures are more likely I
still don’t think we'll be seeing them anytime soon, if at all.

xMeowthz

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No... but spreading a disease which killed off most dinosaurs, perhaps.
Also, what scientists? All you've said is as effective as saying "some argue".
Last, how are we supposed to know what they contain is 'dinosaur blood' anyway? I can imagine using DNA from fossils (assuming that can be done), but go on...
One dinosaur was unlucky to be drained, but disease came. Also, it's not just about "dinosaur blood", but also DNA samples from fossils, like you said.

Also, many people think that most reptiles are related to dinosaurs. I don't find that true, as though it's easy to imagine, their body parts are similar, but DNA is vastly different. Studied by several archeologists, dinosaurs are different, very different from reptiles. It's basically what separates cats from monkeys, kids.


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Livewire

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One dinosaur was unlucky to be drained, but disease came. Also, it's not just about "dinosaur blood", but also DNA samples from fossils, like you said.

Also, many people think that most reptiles are related to dinosaurs. I don't find that true, as though it's easy to imagine, their body parts are similar, but DNA is vastly different. Studied by several archeologists, dinosaurs are different, very different from reptiles. It's basically what separates cats from monkeys, kids.


~Massacre.
Cats and Monkeys are both mammals, so a large chunk of their DNA is identical. You forget that humans and Chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA. A human shares half their genetic material with your average back yard Tree.

And no, Dinosaurs were Reptiles. "Deinos" being Greek for terrible, "Saurus" being Greek for, lizard. They were an older class of Reptiles, some of which later evolved into birds during the Jurassic.

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Cats and Monkeys are both mammals, so a large chunk of their DNA is identical. You forget that humans and Chimpanzees share 98% of their DNA. A human shares half their genetic material with your average back yard Tree.

And no, Dinosaurs were Reptiles. "Deinos" being Greek for terrible, "Saurus" being Greek for, lizard. They were an older class of Reptiles, some of which later evolved into birds during the Jurassic.
Correction: Δεινός means fierce. I'm Greek, I know better, right? The part about reptiles is correct, though.

No matter what, though, you can't help but notice the similarities that Dinosaurs have with lizards. Although the birds are indeed the closest species to be identified as the 'descendants'.

Livewire

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Correction: Δεινός means fierce. I'm Greek, I know better, right? The part about reptiles is correct, though.

No matter what, though, you can't help but notice the similarities that Dinosaurs have with lizards. Although the birds are indeed the closest species to be identified as the 'descendants'.
derives from Greek δεινός (deinos) "terrible, powerful, wondrous" + σαῦρος (sauros) "lizard"
Synonyms.


Birds are the living descendants, and the proto-bird/dinosaur ancestors somehow manged to survive the KT event at the end of the Cretaceous.

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I believe an asteroid might have as well destroyed at least 10 to 20% of dinosaurs, but most must have lived. As mentioned, a virus could have killed the rest, along with the ice age, which the temperatures could have killed the remaining survivors in my opinion. However, I consider crocodiles and such insects to be still living dinosaurs, and some were discovered via ocean and water.

WriteThemWrong

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Correction: Δεινός means fierce. I'm Greek, I know better, right? The part about reptiles is correct, though.

No matter what, though, you can't help but notice the similarities that Dinosaurs have with lizards. Although the birds are indeed the closest species to be identified as the 'descendants'.
they were reptiles but dinosaurs are also classified by their anatomy; there are lizard-hipped dinosaurs than there are bird-hipped dinosaurs. both were reptiles but bird-hipped dinos must've been able to survive after KT extinction to evolve into modern day birds
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Hear is my theory. The Earth used to be one big giant continent before it became however many we have now. While the plates under the earth started to move away from each other, they formed massive earthquakes, destroying most land creatures, and burying them under ground. Then, a lot of other animals had no food, and starved, causing them to die out also.
Or:
The meteor thing could have possibly blocked out the sun, causing plants to die, meaning plant eaters die out, and then eventually carnivores eat all of them and there are none left.
So yeah, just two of my possible theories.

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both were reptiles but bird-hipped dinos must've been able to survive after KT extinction to evolve into modern day birds

Modern evidence suggests that birds evovled from lizard-hipped dinosaurs, despite what was originally thought.

The ornithischian hip structure is superficially similar to that of birds, which led Seeley to name them "bird-hipped dinosaurs," though he did not propose any specific relationship with birds. He termed saurischians "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs because they retained the ancestral hip anatomy also found in modern lizards.

However, as later study revealed, the hip structure possessed by modern birds actually evolved independently from the "lizard-hipped" saurischians (specifically, a sub-group of saurischians called the Maniraptora) in the Jurassic Period. In this example of convergent evolution, birds developed hips oriented similar to the earlier ornithischian hip anatomy, in both cases possibly as an adaptation to a herbivorous or omnivorous diet.


However, I consider crocodiles and such insects to be still living dinosaurs, and some were discovered via ocean and water.

Uh. What? Crocodiles are in a different clade of reptiles, and I have no idea what is making you think insects are closely related. (emphasis on closely)

Studied by several archeologists, dinosaurs are different, very different from reptiles. It's basically what separates cats from monkeys, kids.

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The whole asteroid theory is pretty solid by now. To appreciate its scale, you have to consider the massive destruction that the initial impact caused; it's a gigantic, 10-km across space rock ramming into the earth at 20km/s, causing an immediate incineration of whatever lay below it in the supercompressed, superheated air even before impact, and throwing up a huge wall of dark dirt and debris and dust as well as a gigantic shockwave that would kill and carry all sorts of debris for hundreds of miles in a deadly radius.

(kinda scary to think that this could happen right now with little warning)

On top of that, there would probably be several tsunamis and widespread spontaneous combustion. An impact that big is definitely going to throw huge amounts of dust and particles into the atmosphere; heck, it would have thrown huge rocks almost into orbit. Most of that stuff would have remained suspended for a long, long time, destabilizing the climate for perhaps thousands of years. Whole food chains would have collapsed. The ones who could find shelter, or needed less food than others (some birds, mammals) survived.

Insect theory is kinda not scientifically valid at all. Drainage of blood? You would need unreasonably large swarms. Virus? Evolved resistance, not easily spread (dinosaurs and moths did not live in the age of modern rapid transportation), and, well, viruses just don't collapse entire ecosystems. How do you explain the extinction of other types of organisms at around the same time with a dinosaur-exclusive virus?

Livewire

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The whole asteroid theory is pretty solid by now. To appreciate its scale, you have to consider the massive destruction that the initial impact caused; it's a gigantic, 10-km across space rock ramming into the earth at 20km/s, causing an immediate incineration of whatever lay below it in the supercompressed, superheated air even before impact, and throwing up a huge wall of dark dirt and debris and dust as well as a gigantic shockwave that would kill and carry all sorts of debris for hundreds of miles in a deadly radius.

(kinda scary to think that this could happen right now with little warning)

On top of that, there would probably be several tsunamis and widespread spontaneous combustion. An impact that big is definitely going to throw huge amounts of dust and particles into the atmosphere; heck, it would have thrown huge rocks almost into orbit. Most of that stuff would have remained suspended for a long, long time, destabilizing the climate for perhaps thousands of years. Whole food chains would have collapsed. The ones who could find shelter, or needed less food than others (some birds, mammals) survived.

Insect theory is kinda not scientifically valid at all. Drainage of blood? You would need unreasonably large swarms. Virus? Evolved resistance, not easily spread (dinosaurs and moths did not live in the age of modern rapid transportation), and, well, viruses just don't collapse entire ecosystems. How do you explain the extinction of other types of organisms at around the same time with a dinosaur-exclusive virus?
Exactly. Dinosaurs weren't the only species of animal to die/go extinct during the Cretaceous event. All the large sea-going and airborne reptile species died as well, not to mention other varieties of insects and plants. And a disease virulent enough to jump from species to species like that would have shown up and/or made a bigger impact, but there's absolutely no evidence for that.

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So while ice age creatures are more likely I
still don’t think we'll be seeing them anytime soon, if at all.
Fun fact: Yesterday I read in the paper that a Japanese scientist plans on making a Mammoth embryo by going to hunt for mammoth DNA in Siberia (as you said, for soft tissue frozen in the Russian permafrost). He says in 4 or 5 years, they should have a baby mammoth. :'3 But, seeing is believing I guess. x3

And of course the dinosaurs weren't the only ones to go extinct. It would be odd if they were the only ones suffering from whatever happened 65Ma ago. Lots of lesser species suffered as well, but their disappearance is far from "as spectacular" as that of the "magnificent" dinosaurs.

Did you know that the KT extinction is placed 5th in the order extinctions?
Based on the disappearance of families the order is:
Perm - Trias (Paleozoic-Mesozoic)
Ordovicium - Siluur
Frasnian -Famennian
Trias - Jura
Cretaceous- Paleogene (KT)
Lower Cambrium - Middle Cambrium

When calculating the extinctions per genus and not per family (in the Phanerozoic), the KT boundary gets the 12th place.

Causes for mass extinction:
Meteorite impact
large-scale sea level drop
Ice ages
intense activity of LIPs (Large Igneous provinces)
Anoxic events
Instability of gaseous hydrates


Talking about LIPs, I learned of another possible cause of the dinosaurs' extinction: at the end of the Cretaceous times, the Deccan Traps (India) were formed. In this magmatic province 1*10^6km³ of magma came to the surface. If you think that 150km³ of a large vulcano eruption is enough to change the worldwide climate for year... Go figure what 10000 times as much could do.

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Fun fact: Yesterday I read in the paper that a Japanese scientist plans on making a Mammoth embryo by going to hunt for mammoth DNA in Siberia (as you said, for soft tissue frozen in the Russian permafrost). He says in 4 or 5 years, they should have a baby mammoth. :'3 But, seeing is believing I guess. x3
Heard that myself aswell. After Googling it, the article I read said that his team had already successfully cloned a mouse that died 19 years ago. Apparently if his Mammoth project goes successfully (I can't remember, but I think there was something about using some legs discovered in permafrost) he plans to also clone a Woolly Rhino and open a prehistoric safari park in Siberia (o_O (bear in mind this was on the Daily Mail website, so that part is most likely untrue)).
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Many scientists believe that a meteor knocked out part of the earth and destroyed dinosaurs, knocking the earth into an ice-age, however scientists begin to question this theory, thinking that moths and flys drained out all of their blood, due to their long lifespan. In fact, some flys and moths today have dinosaur blood left in their bodies, leading to a possible rebirth. What do you think of this?

Do you realize what kind of swarm that would have to be, how huge it have to have been to drain all the blood of just one dinosaur? Also I'm pretty sure that moths and most species of fly don't drink blood.
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I don't think the died because of vampire insects, no.

As for bringing them back? It'd be cool, yes. But there'd be a lot of logistics to overcome (and don't bring back raptors, they can open doors :p)