if we had to leave this planet and colonize elsewhere...

Walter Bushell writes:
for the majority of habitable planets. After that, the dinosaurs
ruled for millions of years without developing intelligence.

Actually the did, it was the iradium enriched fusion reactors going off,
the first explosion setting off the others that did them in.

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence, in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science, and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

That impactor could have been thrown intentioanlly in a war...

--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
| you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus

In sci.space.policy Mark Atwood wrote:
Walter Bushell writes:
for the majority of habitable planets. After that, the dinosaurs
ruled for millions of years without developing intelligence.

Actually the did, it was the iradium enriched fusion reactors going off,
the first explosion setting off the others that did them in.

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence, in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science, and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik writes:

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence, in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science, and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.

So their civilization died in a stroke, the last member of dino
sapiens died a few centuries later, and the biosphere damage / change
took a few megayears to kill all the rest...

--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
| you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus

Mark Atwood wrote in
:

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence, in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science, and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

It seems likely to me that sixty million years from now there will still be
marks of our civilization that are easy to detect. We leave a lot of junk
behind; some of it will get preserved.

Possibly the dino people had a civilization that left marks we wouldn't
recognize; I think Harry Harrison wrote some stories along this line (that I
never read).

Matt

Mark Atwood writes:

Walter Bushell writes:
for the majority of habitable planets. After that, the dinosaurs
ruled for millions of years without developing intelligence.

Actually the did, it was the iradium enriched fusion reactors going off,
the first explosion setting off the others that did them in.

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence,

I don't think we can say no to that. We probably don't have
fossils of every dinosaur genus extant at 65 Ma.

But bearing in mind that we have a two million year record
of tool use by various members of genus homo, it would be a
bit odd that we haven't found (or recognized if found) any
tools from a dinosaur stone age.

In "The Dinosaur Heresies" Bakker describes a genus
extant just before the impact, which he believes could
have been the beginning of a larger-brained trend in
dinosaur evolution.

in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science,

There was a drop in species diversity before the impact.
Judging by our own record, could that be a sign of
civilization?

and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

Our own pollution is in sediments now, and will be
detectable by any future society with 21st century
technology for as long as those sediments exist.

If they had an industrial base we'd have detected
it by now. Heck, if they had a road network we'd
have found it.


That impactor could have been thrown intentioanlly in a war...

We also have to postulate, then, that the dinosaurs were
insane.

Mad about MAD, so to speak.

William Hyde
EOS Department
Duke University

Sander Vesik wrote:

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.


That's still (forgive the pun) very much up in the air as far as firm
data goes.

Pat

Pat Flannery wrote:



Sander Vesik wrote:

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.


That's still (forgive the pun) very much up in the air as far as firm
data goes.

The K-T (end Cretaceous, bye-bye dinosaurs) mass extinction seems to have
been pretty rapid. There is evidence that the main extinction phase lasted
less than a few 10ky at most, and probably much less. As it was almost
certainly caused by a meteorite, that is not too surprising.

Some earlier mass extinctions, eg the Late Cambrian, or especially the Late
Devonian, seem to have been much slower, occuring over several millions of
years; and the position as regards some other extinctions is uncertain.

Mass extinctions have mostly only one thing in common - lots of species
become extinct.

There is a small one going on right now, caused by humans, not meteorites.
The mammoth, the cave bear, the sabre-tooth, the buffalo, and many other
large animals have become extinct in a geologically short time.


--
Peter Fairbrother

In sci.space.policy Mark Atwood wrote:
Sander Vesik writes:

Would we, going by the fossil record we have right now, be able to
conclusively say "not, it didnt" that in the very last 100,000 years
of the dino era, a species developed intellegence, in the very last
10,000 years they developed literacy and civilization, and then very
last 1,000 years developed science, and in the very last decade
developed spaceflight?

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.

So their civilization died in a stroke, the last member of dino
sapiens died a few centuries later, and the biosphere damage / change
took a few megayears to kill all the rest...


you would still have pretty hard time explaining absolutely no trace
of it in any discernible way.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

Sander Vesik writes:

Actually, yes, we could. For one thing, the dinosaurs took a long time
to die off after the impact - they didn't suddenly all fall over and die.

So their civilization died in a stroke, the last member of dino
sapiens died a few centuries later, and the biosphere damage / change
took a few megayears to kill all the rest...

you would still have pretty hard time explaining absolutely no trace
of it in any discernible way.

They liked using wood, concrete, epoxy, and laminates, instead of
metal. Maybe they had a metal allergy...

--
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
| you've done anything at all.
http://www.pobox.com/~mra | http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus

hard time explaining absolutely no trace
of it in any discernible way.

They liked using wood, concrete, epoxy, and laminates, instead of
metal. Maybe they had a metal allergy...

Wood fossilises, and objects made of wood on a worldwide scale would leave at
least *some* fossils. Concrete et. al. wouldn't even need to change to remain
in the fossil record.