The Future Is Wild had birds to evolve into something similar to whales.



I imagine they'll turn into the reptilian sea monsters of the dinosaur era, except with feathers.

However, I really doubt anything but cockroaches will survive the mass extinction humans are causing.

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

Nope, big time theropod dinosaurs, the maniraptors. They had wish bones and everything. So did T-rex actually, plus lung spaces in the larger bones like birds do. The hollow bone structure was initially an adaptation for size before it was used as a light weight structure for flight.

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Gimme a minute to read through Jay's latest observations...

I read an article on the moa, and it was unique in that it literally had no wings, not even stubs. Now it seems odd to me that a completely terrestrial bird with no use for its wings would not begin to exploit the advantages of having forelimbs. But again and again we see, whenever a bird loses the power of flight, rather than become more limblike, the wings either atrophy (like an ostritch) or adapt to fly underwater (like a penguin). And why has no bird ever developed teeth? Even birds such as Gastornis, which you'd think would benefit from them.

Other than that (that is, forelimbs and teeth), I'd say that Gastornis and even the ostritch show that birds are perfectly capable of regaining the capabilities of their dino forebears.

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Wikipedia: A MMORPG for self-denialists.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

They were more like giant penguins.




If forelimbs provided a significant advantage to the moa over not having them they would not have been lost.
The wings of an ostrich still have uses like displays for mating or agression and sheltering their chicks from sun and weather.

Birds don't need teeth. Beaks are highly functional. Evolution has adapted different beaks for a variety of uses, crushing, scooping, tearing, drilling, probing. The only thing there doesn't seem to be a beak for is grinding and that's what a gizzard is for.

And the reduced weight of the head/jaw/teeth/supporting muscles probably made stable flight easier. Putting the 'chewing function' nearer the center of gravity was a big plus.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

Yeah, that's what happened in South America.

When they appeared big terrestrial mammalian predators had not evolved yet.

A phorusrhacoid, they were really nasty looking creatures.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Good point! Increase in temps, atmospheric levels of CO2...

One problem is atmospheric pressure. To those who grew up in the Jurassic age, today's sea level feels like 10,000 feet in altitude.

If humans survive another several hundred million years, we'll have lungs the size of our entire upper torsos. Either that our our consciences will live on in robots...

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

A trait that's been derived from normal/standard form (such as front legs and teeth) to become extreme or unusual or specialized (like wings and beaks) almost never reverts to its previous, more normal/standard form. Hooves and flippers have developed from hoofless, terrestrial feet more than once, but hoofless, terrestrial feet have not developed from hooves or flippers. Flowers and leaves developed from a single original structure that served both purposes like fern fronds, but neither leaves nor flowers have become more like the other or come to have both functions again since then. Various kinds of armor have developed on previously unarmored critters but no armored critter has evolved into an unarmored one. Eyes evolved from simpler light-reactive parts more than once, but simpler light-reactive spots, pits, and such have not evolved from eyes. More than one lineage of plants has come to produce wood, which allowed them to become much larger shrubs and/or trees instead of small herbaceous plants, but no tree or shrub species has returned to a non-woody form.

Capabilities, maybe, but not the same traits or genes.

This despite the discovery of thousands of previously non-existant species over the last few decades throughout the worst duration of mass human pollution since we first went "Ug!"

My greatest fear involves the extermination of the oceans, as I've witnessed, first-hand, many dead reefs that were in full viability less than 50 years, that have been killed by industrial pollution. These include reefs SW of Panama, reefs in the South Pacific, and reefs near Hawaii.

It's long been known the oceans are one of the greatest repositories of repositories of CO2, a greenhouse gas, yet instead of focussing on how we can reverse the gross damage we've exterted on the ocean's ability to pack it away, we're trying to limit our comparatively slight contribution to worldwide levels of CO2.

It's a well-known fact that overfishing has lead to a tremendous reduction (less than half, possibly approaching 1/5th) in the numbers of fish which die naturally and thus contribute to the underwater ecosystem. This has lead to a serious depletion in the nutrients required by CO2-fixing plants.

On the other hand, nature has a unique way of adapting to changes, and species like clam, oyster, lobster, and most corals, could care less whether the crap they eat comes from the ocean or has been flushed into their eco-system.

Therefore, I propose the following three-pronged course of action:

1. If it's biological in nature, whether human feces, leftover food, unwanted food, etc., flush it and let nature take it's course. It WILL adapt and overcome (that's the way of nature).

2. If it's non-biological in nature (petrochemical or other man-made substance), then landfill it to remove it from the life cycle, particularly if it's not something that occurs naturally in the oceans, or if it's something that, if changing the levels might threaten a delicate balance.

3. If it's toxic to either the life-cycle or landfill cycle processes, then reduce it using gas plasma furnaces until it's no longer toxic and introduce the results into category 1 or 2, as appropriate.

This isn't rocket science, folks.

Look: Nearly half the reefs in existence in 1950 are DEAD, almost exclusively due to pollution we dump into our rivers.

We need to DO something about it without getting sidetracked into believing myths about economic viablility. Every country's economic viability will remain intact ONLY if the oceans survive. Yet we're so freakin gung-ho about our measely contribution to greenhouse gases that we're totally blind to our huge contribution to the increasing inable of the oceans to fixate many times more CO2 than is our measly contribution.

Uh, DUH!

When will people get it? In 2100, when the light bulb comes on long after it's too late and mass humanity does exclaims Homer Simpson's "DOAH!"?

Why wait? Get with it now.

I really can't believe most of the world's supposedly "top" or "leading" scientists can only think one level down this chain of events.

If this isn't the case, and the responsibility for the disinformation falls to the media, then it's way past the time for these leading scientists to stop oversimplifying the situation to the media and start educating every as to all aspects of global warming, including the well-known natural causes.

A broad-spectrum approach involving all aspects is only going to help the situation, while a narrow-minded approach will only address a small portion of the problem and result in failure while costing us many quadrillions of dollars more than necessary.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Slugs?

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol. A human.

Whoever says "perception is reality" is daft. It's merely an abstraction, and often not a very good one.

Well, in the case of ceteceans, fins evolved into quite complex legs and then reverted back to fins.

Blind cave animals such as crickets and fish still retain their light-sensitivity, even though their eyes have been lost.

No one said they did. Or even implied it. But the previous discussion was on large birds. I was just reminding folks that there were still a few around. Some of the messages seemed to be focused just on birds that were now extinct.

Oh, Seals, sea lions, compete with penguins.

Certainly mammals would eat ostriches if and when they get a chance.

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"I'm as accurate as any psychic. And I'm a cartoon!" -- Squidward

"Arrrgh, the laws of physics be a harsh mistress!" -- Bender

Some, like leopard seals, EAT the penguins.

Thanks for clearing that up

IIRC it was a raptor-like creature that is postulated to have given rise to avian dinosaurs, correct?

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There is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it's all dark - Pink Floyd, The Dark Side Of The Moon

Right.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

Here's a cute restoration of Deinonychus antirrhopus.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman

I'd rather beilive in Santa than believe that Deinonychus looked like that. Prove it to me and I still won't believe it.

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Wikipedia: A MMORPG for self-denialists.

It's gotten to the point where careful investigation is needed just to tell parody from reality. I think that means reality is broken.- Noclevername.

It's not that long ago when dinosaurs were thought to be extraordinary dumb evolutionary dead-enders just waiting to get wiped out. The large sauropods could only live in swamps and pools. The poor creatures died when their habitat dried up, as they were too dumb to find another one. Sluggish Tyrannosaurs walked in an upright position and could only attack its prey because the other dinosaurs were even slower.

If you want to see really weird restorations, go to see Luis V. Rey's gallery. Given that dinosaurs had color vision better than ours, and their descendants are often very colorful, the images don't seem as far-fetched as they would seem.

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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.
-- Richard Feynman