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What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

thewalrus.ca

121–130 of 147 posts

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#121
post #99
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

birds are dinosaurs. I’m not sure how much they evolved from their ancestors but I don’t think it’s much. If I were to guess Dinosaurs will live fine on the current earth.

They had millions of years to evolve.

So did many other organisms who are still with us today. I'm guessing most organisms will be fine if the basics are covered (tolerable level of oxygen and air pressure, tolerable levels of radiations).

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nitrogen is inert. Combustion doesn't need nitrogen. It just basically fills space.

As far as wildfires go, so is carbon dioxide. CO2 is not a typical reactant of combustion.

Sure it does, it's a "product", so in principle it participates in the reverse reaction. This probably doesn't actually make a difference for combustion, although CO2 does apparently work a bit better than N2 for firefighting in spite of the added weight, but that seems usually attributed being heavier-than-air (heavier than O2!) and somewhat polar. Not sure how applicable that is to wildfires when it's the atmosphere, though.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#124
post #70
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, keeping such creatures alive would require facilities with enriched oxygen. If the large ones escaped, they would suffocate. "...large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28." Volcanic activity in the Cretaceous enabled these hi…

Hmm… I have a question inspired by your choice of phrases: Is there a graph somewhere of Earth's mean sea level atmospheric pressure over time? Was it significantly different e.g. a billion years ago?

On mobile so I'll let other ppl sezrch. My $0.02: atmos pressure is a resultant of gravity, which is a result of mass.

The mass has reduced over time, due to solar wind blowing away our atmosphere. But compared with the mass of the friggin' earth, my intuition says atmos pressure has reduced only slightly

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#125

I love thought experiments like these, One would have to think where could ancient dinosaur DNA survive? Antarctica has been covered by ice for 5 million years, that is still 60 million years too young. Maybe there are a few bugs that have dino dna that is better preserved than the stuff that has been exposed to sunlight and elements the past 5 million years. And even if there is viable dna you would have to drill do…

My interest was piqued when you mentioned cuts would heal faster. Is there a video that explains what life would be like if the earth had higher concentrations of oxygen? (30,50,70)?

On mobile, will let someone else search. But what springs to mind : more O2 means faster reactions, so faster metabolisms, so bigger animals and more cancer. Though the latter only compared to equally sized animals today (bigger animals tend to have lower cancer rates I think?)

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#126
What happened to the findings of the gelatinous blood vessels and blood cells that they found within a tyranosaurus rex bone? It was something that scientists said would have been impossible, but they found it about 10 years ago.

Unfortunately, I haven't heard ANYTHING about this. Did they bury this or something or has anything been released about this since then?

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#127
post #64

The dinosaurs lived in an incomprehensibly different world. From the food and nutrition to the very air they were breathing which we only have vague ideas about. That means the first several generations at the very least would suffer and die from various nutrition, toxicity and environment issues. Even after all that got figured out the dinosaurs would likely have be confined to some small controlled environment righ…

"Basically if we bring back dinosaurs it will be to torture them for our amusement and curiosity". Just a thought experiment, I hope I won't be downvoted to hell. Isn't this the predicament of all beings? You might say, that some people enjoy life, but at that point you should 1) Confirm that all beings are not answering with a Stockholm Syndrome 2) Confirm what is the subjective experience of the dinosaur

I was not talking about purpose.

I meant that dinosaur are not biologically capable of living in this time period or this environment of earth. They would have to be on life support from birth. Even than it would take many years of trying before we figured out how to keep them alive. Which means they would start dying a slow agonizing death from the moment we create them.

It would be like dropping people off on Venus and saying make the best of the sulfuric acid atmosphere.

Have you ever seen a killer whale in captivity with its top fin floppy/not standing up straight. They have no idea why that happens in captivity they cannot figure out even after many decades of them being captive. Now imagine that with millions of years of difference.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#128
post #110

I love thought experiments like these, One would have to think where could ancient dinosaur DNA survive? Antarctica has been covered by ice for 5 million years, that is still 60 million years too young. Maybe there are a few bugs that have dino dna that is better preserved than the stuff that has been exposed to sunlight and elements the past 5 million years. And even if there is viable dna you would have to drill do…

Why would 30% oxygen be hard to deal for humans? I didn't think a greater oxygen concentration really mattered to us.

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#129
post #124
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm… I have a question inspired by your choice of phrases: Is there a graph somewhere of Earth's mean sea level atmospheric pressure over time? Was it significantly different e.g. a billion years ago?

On mobile so I'll let other ppl sezrch. My $0.02: atmos pressure is a resultant of gravity, which is a result of mass. The mass has reduced over time, due to solar wind blowing away our atmosphere. But compared with the mass of the friggin' earth, my intuition says atmos pressure has reduced only slightly

I see where you're going with that, but gravitational force is GMm/r^2, so the mass of the air column halving would halve the pressure, and the shell theorem implies that is exactly half and not even a rounding error on M because none of the air above (the only bit contributing to the pressure) can contribute to the gravity field.

First part is also why Venus, with a lower mass, is able to have about x89 Earth's atmospheric pressure.

Re: What would it take to bring back the dinosaurs?

#130
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand, keeping such creatures alive would require facilities with enriched oxygen. If the large ones escaped, they would suffocate. "...large dinosaurs really required to be living in an oxygen tent. An atmosphere in the neighborhood of 35 percent oxygen would be considerably more compatible with large dinosaurs than one in the neighborhood of 28." Volcanic activity in the Cretaceous enabled these hi…

Oxygen only one part and for all we know there were other trace gasses in the air they required that we don't even know about. There are all kinds of animals today we cannot keep alive in captivity because they require some sort of unknown sequence of environmental triggers to activate or deactivate various processes in their body. For instance cheetahs are nearly impossible to breed in captivity because their mating…

Makes me wonder what the evolutionary benefit of keeping such triggers are and makes me wonder if part of the reason for the drop in human fertility in parts of the world is due to us removing some of those triggers for ourselves.
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