Dinosaurs

RobertDyck · 2015-06-07 18:56:07

This is "Free Chat". Just saw a documentary about dinosaurs, and re-run of "Jurassic Park". Build up to "Jurassic World" opening this Friday. The documentary said Jurassic Park got a lot right, but some things wrong. For one, the movie depiction of velociraptor was a combination of two real dinosaurs. The real velociraptor was smaller, about the size of a dog. Steven Spielberg liked the name, but wanted something the size of a person. The real dinosaur that size was Deinonychus. The other issue was raptors had feathers. Tyrannosaurus Rex had skin, paleontologists found a skin impression. So that one was correct. But the documentary said the movie even got one detail of Tyrannosaurus wrong: it ran about 16 miles per hour, not as fast as a cheetah. Still, a 10 ton roadrunner from hell. Wikipedia says 18 mph, and 6.8 metric tonnes (7.5 short tons). Meh! Close enough. They found fossils of velociraptor with impressions of feathers. All raptors had feathers. Modern recreation of velociraptor:

This got me thinking. South America had a terror bird before Central America joined north to south. Then animals could migrate between the two continents. Mammal predators migrated south, out competed terror bird. Paleontologists claim that dinosaurs were dangerous, but if birds evolved from raptors, and terror birds of South America survived until wolves and jaguars arrived, then how bad were they? Scientific name for terror birds is Phorusrhacidae:

::Edit:: The previous image of Phorusrhacidae doesn't show anymore, so replaced by one from Wikipedia.

Last edited by RobertDyck (2021-02-17 11:51:46)

louis · 2015-06-08 04:52:24

RobertDyck wrote:

This is "Free Chat". Just saw a documentary about dinosaurs, and re-run of "Jurassic Park". Build up to "Jurassic World" opening this Friday. The documentary said Jurassic Park got a lot right, but some things wrong. For one, the movie depiction of velociraptor was a combination of two real dinosaurs. The real velociraptor was smaller, about the size of a dog. Steven Spielberg liked the name, but wanted something the size of a person. The real dinosaur that size was Deinonychus. The other issue was raptors had feathers. Tyrannosaurus Rex had skin, paleontologists found a skin impression. So that one was correct. But the documentary said the movie even got one detail of Tyrannosaurus wrong: it ran about 16 miles per hour, not as fast as a cheetah. Still, a 10 ton roadrunner from hell. Wikipedia says 18 mph, and 6.8 metric tonnes (7.5 short tons). Meh! Close enough. They found fossils of velociraptor with impressions of feathers. All raptors had feathers. Modern recreation of velociraptor:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … noguy2.jpg
This got me thinking. South America had a terror bird before Central America joined north to south. Then animals could migrate between the two continents. Mammal predators migrated south, out competed terror bird. Paleontologists claim that dinosaurs were dangerous, but if birds evolved from raptors, and terror birds of South America survived until wolves and jaguars arrived, then how bad were they? Scientific name for terror birds is Phorusrhacidae:
http://img684.imageshack.us/img684/4715 … acidae.png

I remember David Attenborough saying that had things played out a little differently Big Birds (which in case are evolved from dinosaurs) could have ruled the world.

In terms of who is more "dangerous" things are not always they seem. The water buffalo in Africa can kill lions - although lions often predate young or weak buffalo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMBkgDEuZs

RobertDyck · 2015-06-08 10:49:04

One point is that some people act afraid of scientists creating a real Jurassic Park. The claim is dinosaurs would cause modern humans or modern wildlife to become extinct. But the conflict between wolves and jaguars vs terror birds, direct descendants of raptors, did not go well for the birds. Dinosaurs would be dangerous animals, that have to be treated with respect. But don't expect them to take over the world. If set free, mammals will dominate, dinosaurs will die. So it is safe to create a real Jurassic Park.

SpaceNut · 2015-06-08 17:01:22

Playing God if you will in bringing back dead speicies is one of the reasons that the academic community on a whole is wading into genetics very slowly as there are a lot of ways that the research can be used for anything that is not good for man if things might be an over exageration of fears.

tahanson43206 · 2021-02-17 06:10:13

The article at the link below would fit in more than one topic, but this one seemed a reasonably good fit.

The research concludes that a comet from the Oort cloud is more likely to have broken up after passing the Sun too close and hit the Earth to put an end to the era of the Dinosaurs, than the prevailing theory that an asteroid did the job.

A result of the study is elevation of the risk of a repeat incident since (I gather) it is more likely that an object in the Oort cloud can find its way into the inner Solar system than that an asteroid would be deflected from the asteroid belt.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/science … 27392.html

Science Offers New Origin Story for Comet That Killed the Dinos
Matthew Hart
Tue, February 16, 2021 4:11 PM

(th)

Calliban · 2021-02-17 07:59:31

tahanson43206 wrote:

The article at the link below would fit in more than one topic, but this one seemed a reasonably good fit.
The research concludes that a comet from the Oort cloud is more likely to have broken up after passing the Sun too close and hit the Earth to put an end to the era of the Dinosaurs, than the prevailing theory that an asteroid did the job.
A result of the study is elevation of the risk of a repeat incident since (I gather) it is more likely that an object in the Oort cloud can find its way into the inner Solar system than that an asteroid would be deflected from the asteroid belt.

https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/science … 27392.html
Science Offers New Origin Story for Comet That Killed the Dinos
Matthew Hart
Tue, February 16, 2021 4:11 PM
(th)

Both devastating and very difficult to defend against. It would likely only be spotted months before impact and impact speed is likely to be up to 100km/s. An impact of this magnitude by a cometary fragment several km in diameter could actually shatter the local crust resulting in resurfacing of a significant portion of the planet. Bacteria may survive that, but i doubt that human beings would. A very good reason for not wanting to put all our eggs in one basket, by continuing to live on only one planet. What should we honestly be prepared to spend to prevent the end of everything, however small the risk may be on an annual basis?

Last edited by Calliban (2021-02-17 08:02:34)

tahanson43206 · 2021-02-17 09:57:55

For Calliban re #6

Thanks for your follow up on that research report .... With advances in celestial object search in recent years, I think we'd probably know about a comet on a path toward the Sun some distance out ... What I'm ** assuming ** is that the consequences of grazing the Sun would be difficult to predict.

Since I tend to lean toward optimism (when given a chance), I think it might be possible to take timely action.

The scenario is definitely different if an object is dealt with ** before ** it approaches the Sun.

In ** that ** case, a hydrogen bomb should be able to put large parts of the object directly on a path toward the Sun.

The debris left over would be scattered, and no doubt some would swing by the Earth, but at least half should be consumed by the Sun.

That would be a serious waste of resources, however!

A much better plan would be to send a swarm of robot harvesters to collect as much material as possible before the swing by the Sun.

I've proposed a swarm of robot harvesters before in this forum and elsewhere.

(th)

Last edited by tahanson43206 (2021-02-17 09:58:26)

GW Johnson · 2021-02-17 12:45:50

Back in 2009, I traveled to Granada, Spain, to present a poster paper at an asteroid defense conference. I'm sorry to say that the state of asteroid defense has not changed very much since then. My latest assessment is located on my "exrocketman" site as the 30 August 2020 article titled Asteroid Threats.

For a cometary or otherwise-undiscovered asteroidal threat, warning time is short. The only possible defenses are impactors and nuclear explosives, properly used (and the movies did not get that correct). We still lack the rocket vehicles to do the mission. Nothing we have can get there quickly enough. Nor do we yet possess the right kind of spacecraft that can carry and dispense these weapons.

As for the proper applications of impactors and nuclear explosives, and the huge remaining uncertainties we still have for employing them, see the "exrocketman" article. It reference earlier articles I did on the subject, and related stuff. How you actually do this is not what most folks think. Especially with the nukes. There is NO blast/shock wave in a vacuum. Earthly human experience is the wrong guide.

Detection is getting better, but has a very long way to go, for asteroidal threats. We have found just about all the regional-destruction asteroid threats, but the city busters asteroid threats are still largely undiscovered. As for things dropping in from the outer solar system like comets, we have no real detection capability yet, except with only days or hours warning at best. Even some of the potential city buster asteroids don't get discovered until after they have unexpectedly passed by.

Only for threats with well-characterized orbits do we have years of warning time. Those would respond to either gravity tractors or small impactors, if we calculated that one would hit us. The warning times are measured in years, but only for those cases. Apophis won't hit us in 2029, but it will come very, very close. Uncomfortably close at a predicted 38,000 km, center-to-center. 2036? 2043? Who yet knows for sure? Sometimes the math lies to us. Because our models aren't good enough.

GW

Last edited by GW Johnson (2021-02-17 12:55:27)

louis · 2021-02-17 15:37:49

I agree GW that the asteroid threat is vastly underrated. We saw the damage that a relatively small object coming in could do over a vast area of Russia a few years back. It was a total fluke that no one was killed by flying glass or collapsing buildings.

Any thoughts on interstellar objects?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CA%BBOum … asurements

Am I right in thinking they can travel much faster than solar system comets? Oumuamua's unusual shape - didn't that make it more difficult to detect.

GW Johnson wrote:

Back in 2009, I traveled to Granada, Spain, to present a poster paper at an asteroid defense conference. I'm sorry to say that the state of asteroid defense has not changed very much since then. My latest assessment is located on my "exrocketman" site as the 30 August 2020 article titled Asteroid Threats.
For a cometary or otherwise-undiscovered asteroidal threat, warning time is short. The only possible defenses are impactors and nuclear explosives, properly used (and the movies did not get that correct). We still lack the rocket vehicles to do the mission. Nothing we have can get there quickly enough. Nor do we yet possess the right kind of spacecraft that can carry and dispense these weapons.
As for the proper applications of impactors and nuclear explosives, and the huge remaining uncertainties we still have for employing them, see the "exrocketman" article. It reference earlier articles I did on the subject, and related stuff. How you actually do this is not what most folks think. Especially with the nukes. There is NO blast/shock wave in a vacuum. Earthly human experience is the wrong guide.
Detection is getting better, but has a very long way to go, for asteroidal threats. We have found just about all the regional-destruction asteroid threats, but the city busters asteroid threats are still largely undiscovered. As for things dropping in from the outer solar system like comets, we have no real detection capability yet, except with only days or hours warning at best. Even some of the potential city buster asteroids don't get discovered until after they have unexpectedly passed by.
Only for threats with well-characterized orbits do we have years of warning time. Those would respond to either gravity tractors or small impactors, if we calculated that one would hit us. The warning times are measured in years, but only for those cases. Apophis won't hit us in 2029, but it will come very, very close. Uncomfortably close at a predicted 38,000 km, center-to-center. 2036? 2043? Who yet knows for sure? Sometimes the math lies to us. Because our models aren't good enough.
GW

Quaoar · 2021-02-17 16:07:08

RobertDyck wrote:

This is "Free Chat". Just saw a documentary about dinosaurs, and re-run of "Jurassic Park". Build up to "Jurassic World" opening this Friday. The documentary said Jurassic Park got a lot right, but some things wrong. For one, the movie depiction of velociraptor was a combination of two real dinosaurs. The real velociraptor was smaller, about the size of a dog. Steven Spielberg liked the name, but wanted something the size of a person. The real dinosaur that size was Deinonychus. The other issue was raptors had feathers. Tyrannosaurus Rex had skin, paleontologists found a skin impression. So that one was correct. But the documentary said the movie even got one detail of Tyrannosaurus wrong: it ran about 16 miles per hour, not as fast as a cheetah. Still, a 10 ton roadrunner from hell. Wikipedia says 18 mph, and 6.8 metric tonnes (7.5 short tons). Meh! Close enough. They found fossils of velociraptor with impressions of feathers. All raptors had feathers. Modern recreation of velociraptor:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c … noguy2.jpg
This got me thinking. South America had a terror bird before Central America joined north to south. Then animals could migrate between the two continents. Mammal predators migrated south, out competed terror bird. Paleontologists claim that dinosaurs were dangerous, but if birds evolved from raptors, and terror birds of South America survived until wolves and jaguars arrived, then how bad were they? Scientific name for terror birds is Phorusrhacidae:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … agliai.jpg
::Edit:: The previous image of Phorusrhacidae doesn't show anymore, so replaced by one from Wikipedia.

The velociraptor of Jurassic Park is actually a utahraptor: at the time the utahraptor was not still discovered, but the narrative needed an over-sized velociraptor: they asked paleontologist Robert Bakker who told them to do it anyway because evolution can change the size of an animal very quickly, so it's very likely that an over-sized velociraptor had really existed. Few months after the first utahraptor was discovered (they create it as a big lizard but it was feathered like a bird).
T-Rexs hounted in pack like lions: the young specimen were nimble and faster: they chased the prays driving them where the slower but more powerful adults lurked in ambush

Last edited by Quaoar (2021-02-19 14:52:38)

Quaoar · 2021-02-17 16:14:20

RobertDyck wrote:

One point is that some people act afraid of scientists creating a real Jurassic Park. The claim is dinosaurs would cause modern humans or modern wildlife to become extinct. But the conflict between wolves and jaguars vs terror birds, direct descendants of raptors, did not go well for the birds. Dinosaurs would be dangerous animals, that have to be treated with respect. But don't expect them to take over the world. If set free, mammals will dominate, dinosaurs will die. So it is safe to create a real Jurassic Park.

I agree it's safe to create a real JP: actual ecosystems are not optimized to support a mesozoic mega-fauna: in wilderness big sauropod wouldn't have enough plant to eat, so big carnivores like T-Rex wouldn't have big prays to eat

SpaceNut · 2021-02-17 17:55:36

Not as old but important Researchers recover 1-million-year-old mammoth DNA

Quaoar · 2021-02-19 15:00:04

SpaceNut wrote:

Not as old but important Researchers recover 1-million-year-old mammoth DNA

I'ts very interesting: if we avoid to annihilate each other in a nuclear war, in a near future we will likely able to resurrect the mammoth, by studying the difference between it and an elephant, then engineering an elephant embryo by changing the genes in a way to grow as a mammoth.

SpaceNut · 2021-02-19 17:54:13

That is something which we can do with as you noted the next best match and cloning it is possible to bring the extinct back from the dead.

Quaoar · 2021-04-13 14:36:27

SpaceNut wrote:

That is something which we can do with as you noted the next best match and cloning it is possible to bring the extinct back from the dead.

It is called deextinction:

quagga%20whats_new_02.jpg

The foal in the picture is a young quagga, a South African equine who is back after become extinct 100 years ago.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2021-05-21 04:23:40

Experts believe that a massive asteroid was a primary cause of dinosaurs' extinction some 65 million years ago and it gave rise to mammals and eventually the age of mankind.

There is a theory that a near by star passed the Oort cloud, disturbed a lot of astreroids comets in the outer solar system sending them inward and caused mass extinctions in the geological record star
...others ask did a star called Nemesis kill the dinosaurs?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_( … ical_star)

Astronomers also say Scholz’s star, was just 8/10ths of a light year at closest approach to our Sun.

News of the future?

In 1.3 Million Years, a Star Will Come Within 24 Light-Days of the Sun
https://www.universetoday.com/151040/in … f-the-sun/

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-05-21 04:27:46)

SpaceNut · 2021-05-21 20:25:20

wondered how far it was in AU's from Pluto and https://www.justintools.com/unit-conver … mical-unit
Pluto's perihelion is 29.7 AU, and its aphelion is 49.3 AU. Pluto's average distance, or semi-major axis, is 39.5 AU. from the sun....

convertor says that Pluto's distance is woefully close in comparison as 1 ld= 173.13080646675 au

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-01 19:01:41

Darkness caused by dino-killing asteroid snuffed out life on Earth in 9 months
https://www.space.com/asteroid-impact-d … n-darkness

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-01-05 08:14:06

Toxic gas released by ancient microbes may have worsened Earth's largest mass extinction | "The microbial disaster that may have triggered the largest extinction in Earth's history also echoes in modern algal bloom events"

https://www.space.com/permian-extinctio … lfide.html

SpaceNut · 2022-07-02 12:34:00

bump here is another topic

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-07-02 14:51:47

Researchers simulate defense of the Earth against asteroid impact
https://phys.org/news/2022-06-simulate- … mpact.html

SeedVault?

In this locked vault deep within a mountain seed samples of around 6,000 different species are safeguarded
https://www.businessinsider.com/svalbar … ur-2016-11

Svalbard is a group of Norwegian islands located in the high Arctic and only 1,300 km from the North Pole. Within an unforgiving landscape, nestled deep within a mountainside, is a seed bank of global importance. It holds 12,000 years of agricultural history and contains the world’s largest collection of crop diversity.
The facility currently holds about 850,000 different varieties of seed and acts as the back up for seed banks across the globe. This is a collection that is vastly important for food security and the safeguarding of crop diversity. Those 850,000 packets of seed represent more than 6,000 species and nearly half of the world’s most important food crops, from cereal and rice to unique varieties of legumes. The seed deposits come from over 60 different institutions and represent nearly every country in the world.

We are currently said to be going through the 'Holocene Extinction' by way of deforestation, human pollution etc

Previous Mass extinctions

Middle Miocene extinction peak 14 Million Years ago. Big changes in climate and Milankovitch orbital cycles may have also contributed, Paleogean global cooling, large drop in sea levels, and the Popigai impactor.

Cretaceous peroid ends –Paleogene extinction event, Chicxulub crater the impact crater is thought to be buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, possibly volcanism from the Central Atlantic magmatic province or an impactor.

Permian–Triassic event Possibilities Extinction reasons include volcanism from the Siberian Traps, impact event from the Wilkes Land Crater, an Anoxic event, another Ice age, the Earth might have been hit with a combination of blows, Anoxic events (are periods wherein large expanses of Earth's oceans were depleted of dissolved oxygen (O2), creating toxic, euxinic water gas, anoxic and sulfidic waters.

Devonian extinction reason unknown, but Cerberean Caldera which was active in the Late Devonian period and thought to have undergone a supereruption approximately 374 million years ago, a large meteorite impact crater has also been found in Western Australia, it may have been a Super Eruption combined with other events,

Ordovician–Silurian extinction events possibly caused by a near by Gamma Ray Burst

Precambrian a possible Snowball Earth event or Huronian glaciation.

As for the Hollywood Blockbuster movies, it seems people have got tired of the Dinosaur Park thing as they once got tired with the Western, maybe they will also tire of Hollywood superhero comicbook films?

‘Jurassic World Dominion’ review: Just going through the dino motions
https://www.fox35orlando.com/news/juras … w-to-watch

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-07-02 14:54:54)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2022-08-16 14:44:48

The plan....De-extinct a thylacine

De-extinction company sets its next (first) target: The thylacine (Tasmanian tiger)

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08 … thylacine/

A number of features of marsupial biology make this a more realistic goal than the mammoth, although there's still a lot of work to do before we even start the debate about whether reintroducing the species is a good idea.

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2022-08-16 14:45:59)

Mars_B4_Moon · 2023-09-27 13:32:14

Alien Machines in the Solar System: The Possibilities and Potential Origins
https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Alie … s_999.html
In 2018, the scientists Adam Frank and Gavin Schmidt proposed the Silurian hypothesis.

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-02-11 03:54:06

Fragments From That Asteroid That Exploded Above Berlin Have Been Recovered and They're Really Special

https://www.universetoday.com/165625/fr … y-special/

Millions of dollars of dinosaur bones are stuck in rock. Will Utah pay to get them out.

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment … help-free/

Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-02-21 08:30:26

Can astronomers use radar to spot a cataclysmic asteroid?

https://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Can_ … d_999.html

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#1 2015-06-07 18:56:07

Dinosaurs

#2 2015-06-08 04:52:24

Re: Dinosaurs

#3 2015-06-08 10:49:04

Re: Dinosaurs

#4 2015-06-08 17:01:22

Re: Dinosaurs

#5 2021-02-17 06:10:13

Re: Dinosaurs

#6 2021-02-17 07:59:31

Re: Dinosaurs

#7 2021-02-17 09:57:55

Re: Dinosaurs

#8 2021-02-17 12:45:50

Re: Dinosaurs

#9 2021-02-17 15:37:49

Re: Dinosaurs

#10 2021-02-17 16:07:08

Re: Dinosaurs

#11 2021-02-17 16:14:20

Re: Dinosaurs

#12 2021-02-17 17:55:36

Re: Dinosaurs

#13 2021-02-19 15:00:04

Re: Dinosaurs

#14 2021-02-19 17:54:13

Re: Dinosaurs

#15 2021-04-13 14:36:27

Re: Dinosaurs

#16 2021-05-21 04:23:40

Re: Dinosaurs

#17 2021-05-21 20:25:20

Re: Dinosaurs

#18 2022-01-01 19:01:41

Re: Dinosaurs

#19 2022-01-05 08:14:06

Re: Dinosaurs

#20 2022-07-02 12:34:00

Re: Dinosaurs

#21 2022-07-02 14:51:47

Re: Dinosaurs

#22 2022-08-16 14:44:48

Re: Dinosaurs

#23 2023-09-27 13:32:14

Re: Dinosaurs

#24 2024-02-11 03:54:06

Re: Dinosaurs

#25 2024-02-21 08:30:26

Re: Dinosaurs

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