What if You Took an Extinct Species Out Of Time And Dropped Them In the Present Era?

[Ajid]

Desptie my earlier slightly jokey comment I couldn't agree more with the above statement. There is something anthropologicaly amazing about the neanderthal. I can only imagine what it would be like to be on a dig site to decipher the society and daily lives of cousins that in DNA terms we still carrier woth us today. I'm envious of you khuratokh to have seem such evidence, all I've learnet has been the odd internet article and National Geographic 2 page spread.

 

[BAYLOR]

Desptie my earlier slightly jokey comment I couldn't agree more with the above statement. There is something anthropologicaly amazing about the neanderthal. I can only imagine what it would be like to be on a dig site to decipher the society and daily lives of cousins that in DNA terms we still carrier woth us today. I'm envious of you khuratokh to have seem such evidence, all I've learnet has been the odd internet article and National Geographic 2 page spread.

They were a different branch of humanity that for a time coexisted with us . That fascinates me.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

No way of knowing. It depends on the species and the ecosystem they are dropped in. You can't simply say that our diseases would wipe them out because they haven't adapted to them a la war of the worlds. Because it cuts two ways. Our diseases haven't adapted to them either. They may well not be able to affect them.

Likewise comparing predatory critters is a waste of time. You can talk about ferocity, size and speed etc all you want, but there are hundreds of factors that go into making one critter a success and another not. Number of young they have, ability to deal with climate, intelligence, etc etc. The list is almost endless.

As for Neanderthaal he may not have been wiped out at all. His DNA is part of us, so who's to say he wasn't simply part of our tribes that was less successful in breeding.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[BAYLOR]

Passenger Pigeon once the most common bored in all of North America, were driven to extinction due to the stupidity of over hunting and habitat destruction. The last one died in zoo in 1914.

I wish they could bring this one back.

 

[Camiedee]

I would like to see how the quagga would fit in today. It only went extinct about 120 years ago and wouldn't be to out of place in this day in age.

 

[BAYLOR]

Basilosaurus, a primitive whale that lived during the Eocene period about 40 million years ago. It grew to be about 60 feet long , was an apex ocean Predator, with powerful jaws with a very impressive set of teeth. It was likely an evolutionary dead end , died out around 34 million years ago.

if you were to drop viable population of them in the oceans today, they could survive.

 

[BAYLOR]

A further note about Bailosaurus , it if were in today Oceans , it would be the top predator in the Ocean, At 60 feet. it's 3 time the length of a great white and about twice the size of Killer whale. But, I think it would fare poorly against a pod of killer whales. Its presence in the water would make a day at the beach a very hazardous affair and I would not want to go out on the water in any kind of small boat. Fishermen would have a really difficult time earning a living.

 

[Khuratokh]

The Tully Monster

 

[Vertigo]

I don't think the comment about viruses and bacteria is necessarily relevant. Particularly if we are going far enough back. The reason being that they haven't adapted to new strains but equally those strains will have adapted away from those creatures and so in reality it may be that they find there are almost no bacteria that target them directly. Not sure about that though.

Bottom line I think it would be like any introduction of a 'foreign' species. Some would be out competed and likely die off others would probably turn out to be 'invasive' and wipe out existing species. Either way it probably wouldn't work well.

I would add that the most likely result would be the older species being out-competed by the current ones. After all there is a reason why evolution progresses. Most existing species should be better adapted to today's conditions. For example dinosaurs were already in decline before that meteor came along. Probably because they couldn't adapt well to a more varied climate; I think the seasonal weather variations they experienced were much less than the modern world, with it's current tilt and land mass distribution.

 

[BAYLOR]

I don't think the comment about viruses and bacteria is necessarily relevant. Particularly if we are going far enough back. The reason being that they haven't adapted to new strains but equally those strains will have adapted away from those creatures and so in reality it may be that they find there are almost no bacteria that target them directly. Not sure about that though.

Bottom line I think it would be like any introduction of a 'foreign' species. Some would be out competed and likely die off others would probably turn out to be 'invasive' and wipe out existing species. Either way it probably wouldn't work well.

I would add that the most likely result would be the older species being out-competed by the current ones. After all there is a reason why evolution progresses. Most existing species should be better adapted to today's conditions. For example dinosaurs were already in decline before that meteor came along. Probably because they couldn't adapt well to a more varied climate; I think the seasonal weather variations they experienced were much less than the modern world, with it's current tilt and land mass distribution.

If the asteroid had not hit, The non avian Dinosaurs would have lost their dominant position on earth. But I think that some species might still be with us today.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

One of the major issues any species would face - specifically larger and more powerful species would be that the air content has changed significantly.

The oxygen content is far lower and one of the primary reasons species are smaller today than in the past. Jurassic park Dinos would be wheezing asthmatics.

er ... actually, no.

Oxy levels in the Jurassic (199.6 million years ago to 145.5 MYA) were LOWER than they are today, as this graph clearly shows:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309100615/gifmid/30.gif

Oxy levels today are the highest in about 250 million years, higher than they have been for most of the planets history, have been going up continuously for the last 50 million, and somewhat more bumpily for the last 200 million.

I have a suspicion that the myth of Earth's declining oxy levels got started in the marketing of bogus "oxygen water" products sold to the unusually credulous. I know for a fact the con artists selling the stuff made that claim.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Passenger Pigeon once the most common bored in all of North America . . .

Hard to see how they could have been bored when faced with an existential threat. Terrified maybe, but not bored.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

With viable number specimen so that they could breed and start up again? Which species from the past could survive and compete and maybe prosper in the present era's eco system ? Hypothetically , what challenges do you think they might face?

There are hundreds of medium to large animal species that became extinct during the present interglacial that should have no problem with the climate. They got exterminated by invasive species, like, but not limited to, humans. The moas may be the most interesting. They are said to have been very tastey. So I'll vote for them, because I'd love to pig out in an all you can eat place, and then say "I'll think I'll have some moa."

 

[BAYLOR]

Hard to see how they could have been bored when faced with an existential threat. Terrified maybe, but not bored.

A Typo on my part.

There have talks about bring this special back via cloning.

 

[BAYLOR]

There are hundreds of medium to large animal species that became extinct during the present interglacial that should have no problem with the climate. They got exterminated by invasive species, like, but not limited to, humans. The moas may be the most interesting. They are said to have been very tastey. So I'll vote for them, because I'd love to pig out in an all you can eat place, and then say "I'll think I'll have some moa."

Some of the smaller varieties of Moa may made it to the 19th Century.

The Moa's closet relative is the Kiwi bird.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

A Typo on my part.

I understood. I speak fluent Typonese. It's just that I'm addicted to word play. I figure health insurance will soon be required to cover therapy for it and then I can find a program in a clinic somewhere in the Carribean. Of course I doubt if they'll actually be able to CURE it, so I'll have to go for periodic therapy. Hey, if heavy metal music addiction can make the grade, surely pun addiction can.

 

[Khuratokh]

er ... actually, no.

Oxy levels in the Jurassic (199.6 million years ago to 145.5 MYA) were LOWER than they are today, as this graph clearly shows:
http://www.nap.edu/openbook/0309100615/gifmid/30.gif

Oxy levels today are the highest in about 250 million years, higher than they have been for most of the planets history, have been going up continuously for the last 50 million, and somewhat more bumpily for the last 200 million.

I have a suspicion that the myth of Earth's declining oxy levels got started in the marketing of bogus "oxygen water" products sold to the unusually credulous. I know for a fact the con artists selling the stuff made that claim.

Well how do we explain the giant dragonfly ? If there isn't a higher oxygen content, how could itsurvive?

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Well how do we explain the giant dragonfly ? If there isn't a higher oxygen content, how could itsurvive?

In a nutshell, because old assumptions about insect physiology are wrong. This is pretty well accepted now, and any old guard biologist that wants to fight a rear guard action against modern views bears the burden of proof. Prehistoric atmospheric chemistry has been a pretty active field of research in last few years (2 guesses why) and this giant-dragonflies-had-to-have-elevated-oxy hypothesis has had to yield to more recent data.

In a general way, this is an oft-told story: scientists advance a tentative hypothesis appropriately couched with reservations, popularizers report it as proven fact shorn of all qualifiers, high school teachers promulgate it as divine revelation of the god Science, and it becomes popular dogma. Beware of what "everybody knows".

I could spend a ridiculous amount of time documenting this, but this Wikipedia quotation sums it up pretty well:

"The large size of insects and amphibians in the Carboniferous period, where oxygen reached 35% of the atmosphere, has been attributed to the limiting role of diffusion in these organisms' metabolism.[citation needed] But Haldane's essay[12] points out that it would only apply to insects. However, the biological basis for this correlation is not firm, and many lines of evidence show that oxygen concentration is not size-limiting in modern insects.[9] Interestingly, there is no significant correlation between atmospheric oxygen and maximum body size elsewhere in the geological record.[9] Ecological constraints can better explain the diminutive size of post-Carboniferous dragonflies - for instance, the appearance of flying competitors such as pterosaurs and birds and bats.[9]"

from:
Geological history of oxygen - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Even when this idea was accepted, it didn't apply to animals that actively breathe, as vertebrates clearly do, and as at least some insects are now suspected of doing, and the assertion was about "any animal" and specifically "Jurassic park Dinos".

And regardless of why, the more direct evidence on prehistoric atmospheric chemistry has to trump this rather questionable indirect argument.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

BTW, the "Haldane" alluded to above is JBSH, the same guy who did so much work on decompression theory, and so much else. Guy was almost as much an amazing polymath as Pauling.

 

[BAYLOR]

There are some species of Isopods in the deep sea that get to be the size of a soccer ball.