What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
thewalrus.ca
What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
1–10 of 147 posts
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#2Pedantically, we don’t need to bring back the dinosaurs since they are already here. All birds are dinosaurs. If we want to bring back the non-avian dinosaurs, cause a mass extinction of mammals (we are doing a great job at that) and then wait millions of years.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#3I'm generally with the detractors on a lot of this. I don't think that bringing back dinosaurs is the best idea. I do think getting more diversity with grazing animal populations and increasing the numbers for ruminants would be beneficial. A lot of the grasslands have deteriorated as the numbers of grazing populations have declined. Nature is an ecosystem, not a mono crop.
On the flip side, just with breeding, we've seen what variance can do to bee populations (africanized bees), and how a lack of diverse pollinators are less effective than honey bees alone.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#4Pedantically, we don’t need to bring back the dinosaurs since they are already here. All birds are dinosaurs. If we want to bring back the non-avian dinosaurs, cause a mass extinction of mammals (we are doing a great job at that) and then wait millions of years.
We want Ornitishian dinosaurs, too.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#5Wouldn't that also require the atmosphere of the Earth to contain 33% oxygen again?
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#6I'm generally with the detractors on a lot of this. I don't think that bringing back dinosaurs is the best idea. I do think getting more diversity with grazing animal populations and increasing the numbers for ruminants would be beneficial. A lot of the grasslands have deteriorated as the numbers of grazing populations have declined. Nature is an ecosystem, not a mono crop. On the flip side, just with breeding, we've…
I don't think anyone is considering this as really bringing them back and releasing them into an ecosystem, just Jurassic Park type novelty.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#7I find it fascinating that we may be able to clone extinct species, but I agree with the warnings about the dangers of de-extinction. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. It's important to consider the potential consequences of bringing back ancient species, both for the animals themselves and for the ecosystem. It's also worth noting that even if we are able to successfully clone a dinosaur, it's unlikely that it would be a true copy of the original due to the degradation of DNA over time. Cloning a dinosaur would be more like creating a genetically modified hybrid than reviving a true extinct species.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#8Wouldn't that also require the atmosphere of the Earth to contain 33% oxygen again?
If you can construct a dinosaur zygote (genome, a wealth of proteins and enzymes, epigenetic markers, cell environment, etc. etc.), you can easily oxygenate a containment room or adjust the metabolic parameters.
DNA's short half life (relative to geological time scales) means we likely won't be recovering enough information from fossils. DNA is a reactive species (it has to be to undergo the incredible mechanics it does). I'm not going to calculate the number of samples we'd need - it's a lot.
Any future "clones" will leverage the wealth of information we gain from our current biodiversity. Really advanced computer-generated approximations of what the biochemistry, developmental biology, etc. could have been.
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#9Wouldn't that also require the atmosphere of the Earth to contain 33% oxygen again?
It dropped by a third, which is less than the difference between New York and La Paz, so I guess they could deal with it? I wonder how well their immune systems would handle modern germs, though...
Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?
#10I'm generally with the detractors on a lot of this. I don't think that bringing back dinosaurs is the best idea. I do think getting more diversity with grazing animal populations and increasing the numbers for ruminants would be beneficial. A lot of the grasslands have deteriorated as the numbers of grazing populations have declined. Nature is an ecosystem, not a mono crop. On the flip side, just with breeding, we've…
I don't think anyone is considering this as really bringing them back and releasing them into an ecosystem, just Jurassic Park type novelty.
If you bring them back, it's only a matter of time before they are in the ecosystem. Maybe we contain it for a decade, a century at most but it's going to happen. It's basically the plot of the entire movie series.