Potential Reoccurrence of Dinosaur-like Adaptations in the Future

[Trevor]

Dear fellow forum goers,

 

As of late, I have come across an interesting timetable on Wikipedia detailing the timeline of the far future based on predictions from fields such as astrophysics, geology, and evolutionary biology.

 

At the 250-300 million years from now marker the article reads: "All the continents on Earth may fuse into a supercontinent. Three potential arrangements of this configuration have been dubbed Amasia, Novopangaea, and Pangaea Ultima.^[40][56] This will likely result in a glacial period, lowering sea-levels and increasing oxygen levels, further lowering global temperatures". Later on, it posits that at the 400-500 million years from now mark that "The supercontinent (Pangaea Ultima, Novopangaea, or Amasia) will likely have rifted apart.^[56] This will likely result in higher global temperatures, similar to the Cretaceous period.^[58]"

 

This is pretty interesting to me and I was pondering whether creatures similar to dinosaurs would evolve to fill the new evolutionary niches produced by this environment. It would be satisfying in some way for there to be a cyclic resurgence of forms of organisms on Earth based on the geological cycles that the Earth undergoes. Do you think such creatures akin to dinosaurs would reign again?

[The Jersey Devil]

Interesting thoughts.

Since terrestrial dinosaurs are gone, they technically won’t ever exist again because their lineages are severed.

But if conditions are right for them again, maybe something very similar could appear.

[jpc]

Evolution works by such random and unpredictable ways... this is an unaswerable question.  In this writer's opinion.  You might want to read Steven J Gould's "Wonderful Life" to get a little deeper view of what I said. Dale Russell did a futuristic view of dinosaurs a few decades ago where he claims that troodontids would have ended up being quite like humans.  But I don't think that idea holds much water.

[Trevor]

40 minutes ago, jpc said:

Evolution works by such random and unpredictable ways... this is an unaswerable question.  In this writer's opinion.  You might want to read Steven J Gould's "Wonderful Life" to get a little deeper view of what I said. Dale Russell did a futuristic view of dinosaurs a few decades ago where he claims that troodontids would have ended up being quite like humans.  But I don't think that idea holds much water.

 

I suppose defining a question is the first step. A well defined question could be: What are all the possible organisms that could exist during climates similar to that of the Cretaceous period? I understand that there are unfathomably many phenotype permutations that could be generated from such conditions. The complexity of genetic variation is not yet fully manipulable by humans and as such I agree that the question I posed has no current upper bounds or answer.

 

Your commenting of  Dale Russell's view that "troodontids would have ended up being quite like humans" struct a chord in me. There is something called the Silurian Hypothesis that posits that the byproducts of an industrial civilization analogous to the current one would be lost to geological records after approximately 15 million years. If none of its members were fossilized, and if no evidence of it remains today, then how can we omit the possibility that, on Earth, there many have previously existed industrial civilizations? This is the basis for the hypothesis. The research article is well worth a read.

[Yoda]

20 hours ago, Trevor said:

 

 

Your commenting of  Dale Russell's view that "troodontids would have ended up being quite like humans" struct a chord in me. There is something called the Silurian Hypothesis that posits that the byproducts of an industrial civilization analogous to the current one would be lost to geological records after approximately 15 million years. If none of its members were fossilized, and if no evidence of it remains today, then how can we omit the possibility that, on Earth, there many have previously existed industrial civilizations? This is the basis for the hypothesis. The research article is well worth a read.

Just a personal observation.

 

We have found fossil evidence of soft bodied life forms going back 510 millions years (for eg Burgess ). But evidence of an industrialised civilisation will be undetectable after 15 million years. 

If you think of the impact we have made on our planet - concrete, bricks, metal products etc. Not going to just disappear 

[aplomado]

There is a major objection to the  Silurian Hypothesis that I can recall- humans have repeatedly discovered large deposits of undisturbed metals to mine.  If there was an extensive ancient industrial society, we would have expected these to have been depleted long ago.

[Trevor]

53 minutes ago, aplomado said:

There is a major objection to the  Silurian Hypothesis that I can recall- humans have repeatedly discovered large deposits of undisturbed metals to mine.  If there was an extensive ancient industrial society, we would have expected these to have been depleted long ago.

 

Interesting, thank you for sharing.

[siteseer]

On 6/22/2020 at 10:53 AM, Trevor said:

 

I suppose defining a question is the first step. A well defined question could be: What are all the possible organisms that could exist during climates similar to that of the Cretaceous period? I understand that there are unfathomably many phenotype permutations that could be generated from such conditions. The complexity of genetic variation is not yet fully manipulable by humans and as such I agree that the question I posed has no current upper bounds or answer.

 

Your commenting of  Dale Russell's view that "troodontids would have ended up being quite like humans" struct a chord in me. There is something called the Silurian Hypothesis that posits that the byproducts of an industrial civilization analogous to the current one would be lost to geological records after approximately 15 million years. If none of its members were fossilized, and if no evidence of it remains today, then how can we omit the possibility that, on Earth, there many have previously existed industrial civilizations? This is the basis for the hypothesis. The research article is well worth a read.

 

I remember reading somewhere that our civilization would likely leave just an iron stain in a sedimentary layer in the geologic future.  I would think some human remains would be recovered- bodies never found in floods that washed into rivers and got buried if nothing else.  Some of them would have dental implants and maybe show signs of surgery/healing or knee replacement or prosthetiics - something like that.  Future paleontogists would see we had some tech. 

 

As for signs of civilizations existing on earth in prehistory, I think we would have found a bone with an embedded piece of tech unfamiliar to us or some other durable artifact by now though it would admittedly be quite rare.  We don't find a lot of Pleistocene or early Holocene bison bones with man-made points embedded in them.  I haven't found any whale or pinniped bones with hard-to-explain holes or one of those "Predator" points stuck in a rock yet.

[siteseer]

On 6/22/2020 at 8:43 AM, Trevor said:

Dear fellow forum goers,

 

As of late, I have come across an interesting timetable on Wikipedia detailing the timeline of the far future based on predictions from fields such as astrophysics, geology, and evolutionary biology.

 

At the 250-300 million years from now marker the article reads: "All the continents on Earth may fuse into a supercontinent. Three potential arrangements of this configuration have been dubbed Amasia, Novopangaea, and Pangaea Ultima.^[40][56] This will likely result in a glacial period, lowering sea-levels and increasing oxygen levels, further lowering global temperatures". Later on, it posits that at the 400-500 million years from now mark that "The supercontinent (Pangaea Ultima, Novopangaea, or Amasia) will likely have rifted apart.^[56] This will likely result in higher global temperatures, similar to the Cretaceous period.^[58]"

 

This is pretty interesting to me and I was pondering whether creatures similar to dinosaurs would evolve to fill the new evolutionary niches produced by this environment. It would be satisfying in some way for there to be a cyclic resurgence of forms of organisms on Earth based on the geological cycles that the Earth undergoes. Do you think such creatures akin to dinosaurs would reign again?

 

There was a book by Dougal Dixon, an imaginative paleontologist, who made predictions of what life would look like millions of years after humans went extinct (Dixon, 1981)  and another that wondered what life would have been like if dinosaurs had survived (Dixon, 1988).  The former showed things like large squid that adapted to life on land and carnivores that descended from bats.

 

Dixon, D.  1981

After Man:  A Zoology of the Future.  Harrow House Editions (U.S. edition by St. Martins).

 

Dixon, D.  1988.

The New Dinosaurs.  Grafton (U.S. edition by Salem House).