/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6703967
The first lifeform, obviously. Although there probably is no such thing because life is not well defined. Regardless, choose an asexual organism, so you can make more.

>>6703967
>If you could resurrect a single specimen of any extinct organism to study, which one would you bring back?
My anything from my waifu-taxon, Dromaeosauridae

Or perhaps a giant macronarian sauropod, just to marvel at the size.

Sure do OP, particularly the kinds of things that lived in the seas of ancient earth, like this bad boy.
>In 2008, a team of scientists led by S. Wroe conducted an experiment to determine the bite force of the great white shark, using a 2.4 metres (8 ft) long specimen, and then isometrically scaling the results for its maximum confirmed size and the conservative minimum and maximum body mass of C. megalodon, placing the bite force of the latter between 108,514 N (24,400 lbf) and 182,201 N (41,000 lbf) in a posterior bite. Compared to 18,216 N (4,100 lbf) for the largest confirmed great white shark

That's some serious force its exerting, much greater than what we're used to seeing from animals these days, of any kind. Its almost amazing to me that a biological system has that much energy to unload on demand, possibly over and over again. Electric eels amaze me the same way, but its really just a matter of efficient conversion / storage.

I'd love to know why we once had a planet LOADED with megafauna, and now Elephants are as big as it gets on land. How did their skeletons support them? How did their organs and circulatory systems function without rapidly wearing out? Scale a human up just a bit and they start having health problems. Get one up to 8 or 9 ft and you're lucky if they live to 50. Did we used to have less gravity or something?

>>6703972
>The first lifeform, obviously
Duh. why? It's still inside of us, all of us.

>>6704095
there was much more oxygen, that's basically all you need

What dinosaur would be the best for riding? I'd bring one of those fellows back.

Also, how is that chickenosaurus thing going?

>>6704129
>Also, how is that chickenosaurus thing going?
Who knows, he hasn't released much since 2011

This is the most recent I could find

http://beta.slashdot.org/story/181933

Bump. Its hard enough keeping dinosaur threads alive on /an/

>>6704101
That explains the giant bugs, not the giant lizards.

>>6705531
Gotta eat big to get big

>>6704101
>>6704095
Wasn't it related to fermentation of low nutrient conifer vegetation?

>any extinct organism
I'd either go with some Burgess Shale weirdness (Hallucigenia is popular), or maybe something from the time we had a reducing atmosphere.

>>6703972
You want LUCA

>>6703967
I like prehistorical animals. If I could resurrect any extinct animal, it would be the T-Rex, because T-Rex is, by far, the most awesome dinosaur!

I would resurrect Robin Williams and study him

>>6703977

We have to have faggot feathers on all our dinosaurs now because muh birds

>>6705635
>muh edgy grimdark lizards
I've seen it all before

>>6705624
I laughed at this. Now you know I laughed at this.

>>6705665

Now you know I know you laughed at that, and I'm glad we can appreciate that.

Parasaurolophus
my dinosaurs must honk
or breathe fire, if the clowns are correct

>>6705710
>or breathe fire, if the clowns are correct
Lel, I've seen that image too.

So whose everyone's favorite paleo artists?

>>6703967
>which one would you bring back?
the Dire Wolf, to breed muh superdawgs

>>6705635
Obligatory reply.

>>6705862
It's probably b8. Feather-haters only start that shit to derail threads

pic related, feathers kick ass

>>6703967
I used to like dinosaurs, but theropods being basically just birds from the beginning instead of looking like in the OP has killed my interest in them a lot.

I'm also somewhat suspect of that field in general due to a perceived eagerness of participants to declare a new species from a couple bones and then be wrong later.

>If you could resurrect a single specimen of any extinct organism to study, which one would you bring back?
Either some female non-neanderthal human species to see if modern humans can breed with it, or a pleiosaur of some type.

I don't actually mind feathered dinosaurs too much. My personal (and completely nonacademic) opinion is that only certain dinosaurs in certain climates had feathers, and even then, some of them only had them in infancy or what have you.

But irregardless, the fact that there will be no huge animals that walk on Earth is just sad.

>tfw you will never see any megafauna.

So, /sci/, how did the dinosaurs die?

>>6706618
niggers

>>6706507
feathers != fur

>>6706601
>One day even triceratops and stegasaurs will have feathers.

>>6706601
>irregardless
see pic

>I don't actually mind feathered dinosaurs too much. My personal (and completely nonacademic) opinion is that only certain dinosaurs in certain climates had feathers, and even then, some of them only had them in infancy or what have you.
You're probably right. It's usually thought most of the really big ones didn't need feathers for thermoregulation unless they lived in a particularly cold climate (such as Yutyrannus). In other words, most of the big dinosaurs still look like "classic" dinosaurs

>>tfw you will never see any megafauna.
From wikipedia
>In terrestrial zoology, megafauna (Ancient Greek megas "large" + New Latin fauna "animal") are large or giant animals. The most common thresholds used are 45 kilograms (100 lb)[1][2] or 100 kilograms (220 lb).[2][3] This thus includes many species not popularly thought of as overly large, such as white-tailed deer, red kangaroo, and humans.

Megafauna doesn't need to be sauropod-sized to be megafauna. You can find megafauna in the dining room of your local McDonalds

>>6708314
>and humans.
Have you ever stopped and though about how you can crush the majority of animal species on this planet in one hand?

Bump for dinosaurs

>>6708322
What's that artist's name again?


>>6708320
>Have you ever stopped and though about how you can crush the majority of animal species on this planet in one hand?
And that the vast majority of organisms to ever exist are microscopic

>>6708314
>see pic
kek. I need to work on not saying that.

>You're probably right. It's usually thought most of the really big ones didn't need feathers for thermoregulation unless they lived in a particularly cold climate (such as Yutyrannus). In other words, most of the big dinosaurs still look like "classic" dinosaurs

Yeah, that's my theory. I can't see adult-sized Tyrannosaurus', or Allosaurus', or most sauropods having feathers other than at birth. Hell, I can hardly see most dinosaurs in stable climates (ie, the ones we think of as dinosaurs) having feathers simply because what's the fucking point in having them.

Now the ones that lived in Antarctica or climates where shit got cold (or, the dinosaur equivalent of cold), then yeah, probably.

>Megafauna doesn't need to be sauropod-sized to be megafauna. You can find megafauna in the dining room of your local McDonalds

But I mean megafauna like sauropods, or mammoths, or something, not some fat ass who's eaten one too many Big Mac.

>>6708326
Are microscopic things microscopic relative to humans or universally? Could a flea sized being see individual bacteria?

>>6708333
>But I mean megafauna like sauropods, or mammoths, or something, not some fat ass who's eaten one too many Big Mac.
There's always whale watching. Unfortunately the majority of our land giants are extinct

>Yeah, that's my theory. I can't see adult-sized Tyrannosaurus', or Allosaurus', or most sauropods having feathers other than at birth. Hell, I can hardly see most dinosaurs in stable climates (ie, the ones we think of as dinosaurs) having feathers simply because what's the fucking point in having them.

Well for Rexy there's skin impressions, as there are with some ornithopods.

>>6708326
Arvalis

Do you guys think any smaller 4 legged types might still exist in like Africa or South America? Any reason they couldn't?

>>6708351
>Do you guys think any smaller 4 legged types might still exist in like Africa or South America? Any reason they couldn't?

No. There's no evidence.

Saying "They're out there hiding, they need to proven" isn't falsifiable. You can't disprove it with a single piece of evidence.

Saying "They're not out there, disprove me with a specimen" is

That's why cryptozoology isn't science

>>6709212
>Saying "They're out there hiding, they need to proven" isn't falsifiable. You can't disprove it with a single piece of evidence.
You can disprove it by searching the whole of the continent and not finding anything.

>>6709465
Not exactly. You can't effective have eyes over every square inch at every given moment. And because of that, it gives cryptofags enough leeway to slide the goalpost ("oh, well you searched the forest, but maybe bigfoot was hiding the whole time").

And saying "they don't exist until proven otherwise" is also more parsimonious. Positive assumptions require positive evidence

See: Karl Popper


Annnyyywaaayyy
There are still big ass theropods running around out there

>>6710104
Theropods are gay.

What does /sci/ think about Paul Sereno's most recent reconstruction of Spinosaurus?

I think there's a shitstorm a brewing

>>6710747
That it ate fish and swam around a lot?
Doesn't make a compelling movie

>>6710755
>That it ate fish

So do grizzly bears. Does that make them less dangerous?

>>6712410
bamp

>>6713364
most based magnolia tree

>>6705656
Nice to see what other boards get upset about. Gives some perspective.

>>6703979
levers dude.

i could generate tons of force with little to no effort.

So was the t Rex a predator or scavanger?

>>6706601
Results of the last decade suggest that pretty much all dinosaurs had feathers of some sort, though structurally those of the ornithischians may have differed significantly from those of the saurischians. But some Cretaceous ornithischians did have recognizable feathers, so it's probable that all dinosaurs had them.
See e.g. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6195/451

>>6719073
Probably a bit of both, like most modern carnivorous animals. Take the easy meat when you find it, and catch fresh when you have to. Unless they had weird digestive issues like pandas, Tyrannosaurs probably had the luxury of doing whatever the fuck they wanted.

>>6708336
Depends on the size of the bacterium (there are microorganisms you can see with your naked eye), but there are also physical limitations to what you can resolve. More likely an organism that feeds on individual bacteria, for instance, will do so by touch/chemical sensing than it will by relying on photoreceptors.

>>6719073
A little of both in my opinion. It's a misconception that it was just a tiny brained idiot. It had fantastic eyesight, the best sense of smell of any dinosaur, and very good hearing. It's teeth are pretty unique if you've ever had a close look at them. They're pretty much meant for crushing bone and tearing through tough flesh. Plus there are fossils with healed over t-rex bites. Those are what make it a good "predator" now the other things. It's tiny arms that were good for literally nothing. Basically making the thing just a giant powerful mouth on legs. And the low speed. Only around 15-20 mph(though this is highly debated) and bad maneuverability. To survive the T-rex would have had to resort to scavenging since it had some disadvantages and it needed to eat a hell of a lot of meet considering it's size. Also a lot of strong evidence of T-rex fighting/cannibalism. You have to do what you can to survive. The shittiest thing about being a T-rex was having to survive as a baby and make it to infancy. You had almost no chance of making it. Everything wants to kill and eat you and there's nothing you can do about it.

>>6719191
>meet
fug. Meat**

I'd resurrect Trilobites, cause fuck their skeletons look cool!

>>6703967
Why don't you guys resurrect a dinosaur that'll benefit mankind? One that'll greatly contribute to scientific progress.

>>6719210
>benefit humanity
>utility
like what? A tame horse-dino? A gigantic cow that need way more food and time to grow? What possible utility would a dinosaur have except as a guard dog that will be shot?

>>6719225
> implying having pachycephalosaur jousting wouldn't make TV worth watching again

If you want it to survive then it would have to be an aquatic dinosaur.
There is half the amount of oxygen in the air that a dinosaur needs to breathe so it would die within minutes unless and enclosure was made with environmental conditions suitable of sustaining it.
As for which dinosaur? The tasty one.

>>6719225
You're not thinking creativity enough anon. Scientist can clone a single dinosaur and create a zoo full of these monsters. People will play money to go to zoos to see dinosaurs. Dinosaur zoos will bring a lot of money and income thus increasing U.S.A GPD making our country lucrative benefiting humanity's pockets.

>>6719318
I don't think you've watched Jurassic Park.

>>6719321
K I retract that comment. The most practical way to use the single wish to bring back a single dinosaur is to resurect us that'll be useful to our technology. Scientist can reverse engineer animal's features and use it. I heard they thought of experimenting on certain fish that can turn invisible, find out how they do it and use it for the military. We'll either bring one that'll benefit medicine or weaponry. Entertainment is the last choice unless the dinosaur will significantly bring in tons of money.

>>6719311
As far as I know, there were no aquatic dinosaurs. There were aquatic reptiles, however. But they'd suffer the same issue of oxygen deprivation; the amount of dissolved oxygen in water is proportional to the partial pressure of oxygen in the air above it.

Also, oxygen concentrations were not constant throughout the eras in which dinosaurs lived. Early Triassic had very low oxygen levels, and very late Cretaceous was just a bit lower than today... though of course, that's when they were going extinct. Jurassic oceans were highly anoxic.

The point is, I guess, that you can probably find some dinosaur that would do okay in this regard, and not all ancient reptiles necessarily would.

>>6703967
>If you could resurrect a single specimen of any extinct organism to study, which one would you bring back?

Hitler

I would want a T-Rex, because that would be really cool. Seeing whether or not it had feathers and such would be good for biologists and archaeologists alike.

>>6719225
>Not having a utahraptor battlemount
Do you even autistic imagination?

>>6720216
>As far as I know, there were no aquatic dinosaurs.
>As far as I know, there were no aquatic NON AVIAN dinosaurs.
ftfy. Penguins are dinosaurs

>>6722671
What's this shit,a Chocobo or something?

>>6722671
these pictures make me think of how stunningly beautiful natural scenery can be, and I wonder why humans built such butt ugly cities to block that out

>>6722707
>What's this shit,a Chocobo or something?
Nope, only a glorious feathered dinosaur.

You're not a scalefag, are you?

>>6722707
All birds are dinosaurs by modern phylogenetic standards, just like humans are monkeys, mammals, vertebrates, animals and eukaryotes.

>>6722713
This. Stupid grade school curriculum still use Linnaean taxonomy, and Linnaean grades are really only good for describing ecological niches

e.g., the only use of using "reptile" to the exclusion of birds would be to describe how a monitor lizard and a camain might fill a similar ecological role (or similar analogy), even though birds are classed as sauropsida and therefor reptiles

They really do need to teach cladistics in schools, but the Ken Ham crowd will fight tooth and claw to make sure that never happens

Sorry, and I fucking PROMISE this is not b8 or troll, but the last time I talked about dinosaurs with somebody I was probably in the 8th grade. No, not because I don't think they are cool. They are fucking tits.

But this whole feather thing? Dinosaurs were all feathered now? What? Somebody fill me in. This is the first I'm hearing in my whole life of feathered dinosaurs. Talk to me. I'm confused. Jurassic Park.

>>6722739
Someone proposed that some dinosaurs may have been feathered and a bunch of retards took it to 11 and are now claiming every dinosaur had feathers.

>>6722739
Here's the nutshell version. I'll try to use more layman's terms, and not all of the autistic jargon


A small dinosaur called sinosauropteryx was discovered with down-like feather impressions in 1996. It's more primitive than dromaeosaurids (raptors) and many other species, indicating feathers had evolved much previously thought. It was the first non-bird animal found with feathers.

A few years after, a well preserved fossil of a small raptor called microraptor was found with impressions of complete wings with fully formed feathers, and yet it's closer to velociraptor than to birds, indicating fully formed wings and even gliding had evolved quite a bit earlier than true birds. Microraptor was well quite adapted for gliding.

Later, Tianyulong, a primitive herbivore was found with quill like structures, and is completely unrelated to meat eaters, indicating body-cover had evolved early on in the dinosaur family tree. This shows that feather-like structures were ancestral to all dinosaurs

Psittacosaurus, which is distantly related to triceratops also had a quill structure of sorts.

Also, yutyrannus, an early cousin of T rex was found completely covered in similar down-like feathers, and it was gigantic.

~~~~~~~~~

Much of this is due to the recent explorations of Chinese fossil beds, whose fine grained sediments are better for preserving soft tissues such as feathers. By comparison, sediments in Montana fossil beds out west are much rougher.

Not to say that all of them had feathers, many large ones would likely have lost feathers just as elephants and rhinos tend to lose most of their body hair. At this point it's clear that body cover of some sort or another was pretty common across the board. And complex feathers were common in advanced theropods (bipedal meat eaters)

Pic: Microraptor. Pigment remains indicate it's feathers were a glossy black, like a crow

>>6722746
>now claiming every dinosaur had feathers.
Gr8 strawman m8.

No paleontologist has ever claimed "all" dinosaurs had feathers. Many of them didn't, we know this because many left skin impressions

>Someone proposed that some dinosaurs may have been feathered
We have fossil evidence to confirm many species did. See pic, also microraptor

Please, do some research before you shitpost

Dumping, for all of the deniers
Pic: tianyulong

yutyrannus

eosinopteryx

>>6704101
Wouldn't that mean we're getting less oxygen,what if it leaves us for good?

>>6722775
Well answered, thank you. This whole thing (less the feathered dino's and more people's reactions to it) gives me quite a chuckle TBH

almost made a bad chicken or egg joke, but nah

>>6722795
then everything that needs oxygen to survive either adapts or dies (protip: most die)

>>6722795
It fluctuates. There's other factors involved, such as the climate (thus effecting vegetation and photosynthetic algea levels), as well as the carbon cycle (both oceans an the mantle can trap or release CO2)

Jurassic oxygen levels weren't too terribly different from today. Carboniferous levels (the "age of insects") were insanely high. The earth was basically a jungle in the carboniferous, hence the coal beds laid down by carboniferous forests

Anyway, among other things >>6705541 is a likely cause. Conifer needles are hard to digest, and fermentation of vast quantities of vegetable matter is a very efficient manner of digestion

I'd rather resurrect cool extinct mammals.

>>6703967
The Spanish Flu

too many damn people on this planet

>>6703967
>If you could resurrect a single specimen of any extinct organism to study, which one would you bring back?

One of those ancient human types that supposedly lived for hundreds of years, so we can get some real longevity research done.

>>6703967
Why not start with something that went extinct only a few hundred years ago.

>>6723315
Because that's fucking stupid

>>6723437
What did you just say to me?

Even if we could piece together a dino genome somehow, we'd need a viable surrogate mother for gestation. It's going to be hard to find a compatible mother animal for a species that went extinct 65 yr ago, or longer.

The only way I can imagine it working is with some serious reverse engineering of the dinosaurs genome based on modern relatives and whatever protein we can find. And then we'd either have to successfully clone each ancestor of their closest modern relative in order to use it as a surrogate mother for the next oldest ancestor, or engineer an artificia womb.

>>6723457
I don't think anyone realistically thinks it's possible to resurrect extinct dinosaurs. Getting the dinosaur DNA is much more of a problem (impossible) than finding a surrogate mother.

>>6723315

Maybe you just misunderstood the question, or you're so unbelievably boring individual that you make some of the most mentally retarded people seem like creative geniuses.

>>6703967
Neanderthals. Prehistoric humans.

Would be cool to learn more about them and their behavior.

A neanderthal human child. A child because, then we can get a better approximation of their mental development and capabilities relative to modern homo sapiens.

>>6722860
Edgy

>>6723471
>>6723475
Yeah, but what if the neanderthal feels like a freak living amongst modern humans? If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

Lieopleurodon

You have to wonder how such a strange creature evolved like that for life in the oceans. I mean there's nothing else like it (Large, lizardlike body with fins instead of claws and a long, gaping maw) living in the oceans, so how would it fair in the oceans today?

>>6723663
>Lieopleurodon
The real 7-10 meter one, or that silly 25m nonsense from Walking With Dinosaurs?

REAL liopleurodon was no larger than an orca. All of that super-giant 80ft shit is based off a few toothmarks on other animals, which probably were inflicted at a young age and then stretched as the victim grew and healed

>>6723677

Regardless of size, I just find it an interesting creature. I know that in reality it wasn't that massive

>>6723652
>If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

There is always rape.

>>6723697
Just making sure, I'm one of the in-house paleo-autists. Apparently there's a theropod craniologist and a basal archosaur paleontologist on /an/

>>6723652

That would be a very interesting scientific observation.

>sounding edgy when not trying to, sorry

>>6723475
>>6724026

Okay, make it a male. He'll be a freak, but he'll be buff and many times stronger than any human beings. Many homo sapiens girls will offer themselves for him. Part of being unwanted solved right there.

>>6723475
>>6724026 (You)

Okay, make it a male. He'll be a freak, but he'll be buff and many times stronger than any other existing human being. Many homo sapiens girls will offer themselves for him. Part of being unwanted solved right there.

>>6723464

We can look at the DNA of their closest modern relatives, extrapolate from that what we know about their environment, reverse-engineer proteins we can recover from fossils, and run computer simulations / just be creative to fill in the gaps.

I certainly down believe our knowledge of genomics has matured enough.

But roughly reproducing the genome of a creature from 65M yr. ago is still within the realm of definitely possible science.

>>6723652

>Yeah, but what if the neanderthal feels like a freak living amongst modern humans? If they are as intelligent as us, then they might feel like an unwanted and unloved expirement. It could produce a very miserable life

You would clone at least several neanderthals simultaneously so they have some sense of community.

>>6722671
Aquatic in the sense that they live primarily underwater and derive their oxygen through gills or some equivalent. Context, context.

>>6722713
Humans aren't monkeys. We have a common ancestor. Humans are primates, however.

Similarly, birds are descendants of dinosaurs, but a sparrow is not a dromaeosaur. When a paleontologist says the word "bird," they'll always mean an animal in class Aves, whereas when they use the word "dinosaur," they'll always be referring to some animal which is not in that class.

>>6724056
See: Jack Horner

>>6724091
>Humans aren't monkeys. We have a common ancestor. Humans are primates, however.
Fucking Linnaean faggots and their paraphylitic groups:

>"Monkey" includes the groups haplorhini and simians, except tail-less simians which we've arbitrarily decided to classify as non monkeys.

Disgusting.

>>6724091
>When a paleontologist says the word "bird," they'll always mean an animal in class Aves, whereas when they use the word "dinosaur," they'll always be referring to some animal which is not in that class.

Also, that's wrong. Paleontologists don't use Linnaean taxonomy at all. Serious biologists of any kind don't use it either. Birds are dinosaurs, birds are reptiles, humans are monkeys, and giraffes are fish.

Common ancestors is the only meaningful and objective system of classifying organisms, anything else is arbitrary bullshit.

>>6722775
all of those examples you mentioned were found in china or adjacent asian countries. Do you think it's possible feathered dinosaurs were a product of Mesozoic china and not spread worldwide?

>>6724091
Humans are monkeys, actually.

The distinction between man and monkey is completely arbitrary and non-scientific. We're a subspecies of old world monkeys (Cercopithecoidea).

>>6724091
Humans are monkeys, actually.

The distinction between man and monkey is completely arbitrary and non-scientific. We're a subspecies of old world monkeys (Catarrhini).

>>6724656
We are monkeys, but we aren't a subspecies of the family, we're an entirely separate species. Since species can be objectively determined, the distinction between man and ape is scientific and non-arbitrary. It merely doesn't abide by phylogenic conventions.

>>6724668
>species can be objectively determined
>the distinction between man and ape is scientific and non-arbitrary
My point is that the distinction itself only exists in non-scientific context. There is no scientific distinction to be made. The word "ape" isn't useful for describing specific anthropoids because the definition is too broad.

The only thing that is objective here is that hominoidea is a superfamily of the parvorder catarrhini.

>>6705635
The truth hurts, anon.
But not this one. Get over it.