• wewbull@feddit.uk
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    10 hours ago

    Which makes me ask, why were mammals able to evolve to produce an apex predator that relies on it’s inventiveness (Humans) in quite a short time, but no similar “dinosaur” got to that point in a much longer period?

    We’re searching planets for signs of life as a pre-cursor to intelligent life, but there’s no guarantee that life will evolve in the same direction as ours.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      Corvids and psittacines display human child level intelligence. They use tools. They recognize other people. Hell the psittacines can mimic speech.

      I personally suspect it’s a matter of energy density. Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying. Doesn’t leave a lot of energy left over for a massively hungry brain. No clue what’s holding back penguins, emus, and cassowaries.

      • Digestive_Biscuit@feddit.uk
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        55 minutes ago

        Most birds are extremely light and efficient. Their bones have evolved to be light weight to help with this. Some species even fly in a V formation to conserve energy.

        Evolution doesn’t mean get better or smarter. It just means the species can survive and keep reproducing. Emperor Penguins in Antarctica for example, where they nest in a place where there are no predators. It seems insane the hardship and their silly walk which takes forever. But it works.

      • exasperation@lemm.ee
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        7 hours ago

        Birds have to use almost all of their available calories on flying.

        But flying is quite energy efficient as a method of getting from point A to point B. That’s why flying insects and birds have had such evolutionary success with that strategy.

        • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          7 hours ago

          Is it though? They have to eat an absolute ton relative to their own mass. At least all the birds I’ve ever interacted with were constantly eating, even when they mostly didn’t bother flying. Chicken soccer is what I called feeding the chickens. No patience whatsoever.

          My mother used to say that her sons eat like birds, a peck at a time, and twice our own body weight daily.

          While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains. I’m not sure most birds could actually increase their caloric intake enough to be able to evolve bigger brains than they already have. Maybe if we designed them some super foods, but that seems to be cheating, to me.

          • exasperation@lemm.ee
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            2 hours ago

            While we humans eat a lot, something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.

            I don’t think that’s right.

            This article says that about 20% of an adult human male’s resting energy expenditure goes towards supporting the brain’s metabolism. Obviously for more active people, the higher denominator of total energy expenditure will mean an even lower percentage of energy being used for the human brain.

            Flying is energetically expensive to start doing, but pays off in efficiency once an animal moves a far enough distance. How many calories does a goose need to consume to fly 4000 km, and how does that compare to terrestrial species like deer or wolves?

          • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
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            7 hours ago

            …something like 50% of our calories are going to our brains.

            Dang, I’ll have to remember this next time my ADHD pushes me to hyperfocus and I risk skipping meals again. O.O

    • Chakravanti@monero.town
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      3 hours ago

      The difference is that they decided not to be parasitic narcissistic global suicide “apex” who gave no fucks, literally, about our will-no-longer-exist “children.”

      You’re so narcissistic you will refuse to admit that they weren’t stupid. The very way you will chose to be exactly that by denying the obvious as I lay it out so blatantly that your ego cries and denies ad infinitum.

      Edit: Yeah and it’s okay. Those downvotes will save anyone’s life on this planet. Adiós!

  • borokov@lemmy.world
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    13 hours ago

    Also, water you are drinking has probably been peed by dinosaure. Several time. But probably not peed by a human.

  • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works
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    21 hours ago

    There are fossilized humans. Fossilization really doesn’t take that much time, geologically speaking; it just requires very specific conditions.

  • Mr Fish@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    It is more chronologically accurate to show a t-rex being hit by a car than it is to show a t-rex eating a stegosaurus

  • Q The Misanthrope @startrek.website
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    22 hours ago

    This meme made me gasp loud enough that my girlfriend was worried something was wrong.

    Then I had to explain that I’m 41 years old and was just shocked by a dinosaur fact.

      • NegativeNull@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        Another fun fact (dino facts are the best facts): There are more “dinosaur” species alive today than there are mammal species.
        11,000 bird species alive today (approx)
        6,000 mammal species alive today (approx)

          • PixelPinecone@lemmy.today
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            17 hours ago

            Who is “they” and why do they have “all bats”? Also, what’s an all bat?

            On a more serious note, I didn’t know most bird species were bats. That’s wild.

    • fossilesque@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
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      21 hours ago

      Also, my favourite fact is we know almost nothing about dinosaurs from jungles and mountains. Most of our knowledge comes from wetland and oceanic creatures because of the way fossils are formed.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.social
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    24 hours ago

    This is only mind blowing because popular media likes to show every dinosaur at once. Like there’s a lot of things depicting stegosaurus fighting T-Rex; but these animals never would have met. They’re from entirely different periods.

    • tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Does getting buried in pumice count as becoming a fossil? Because Pompeii was only a couple thousand years ago.

      • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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        21 hours ago

        From wikipedia: A fossil (from Classical Latin fossilis, lit. ‘obtained by digging’)[1] is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age.

        Answer: yes. It does count. Specifically carbonization.

        Personal take: when I think of a “fossil”, I think of the stereotypical mineralized bones. Like the T-Rex in the museum of natural history that most people have seen from various movies and TV shows. Thinking of human and human predecessor bones as fossils is just weird to me.

        • Dave@lemmy.nz
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          15 hours ago

          Is Pompeii from a past geological age?

          2000 years ago doesn’t seem important on geological time scales.

          • Miles O'Brien@startrek.website
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            12 hours ago

            Okay so even though I read all this last night, I somehow missed the “2000 - (-2000) years” thus making the current geological age around 4000 years, and technically Pompeii would not count in the strictest definition. That said, had it happened 4,000 years ago, absolutely nothing would have changed. All the stuff would still be carbonized.

            Also from Wikipedia in the (geological age) article: An age is the smallest hierarchical geochronologic unit. It is equivalent to a chronostratigraphic stage.[14][13] There are 96 formal and five informal ages.[2] The current age is the Meghalayan.

            So again the answer is “yes it counts” but my personal take is “it feels weird to consider 4,000-10,000 ago multiple different geologic ages”

            • Dave@lemmy.nz
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              4 hours ago

              Reading through Geologic time scale, it defines an age as equivalent to a chronostratigraphic stage, which it says are normally millions of years. But you’re right, interestingly the current Meghalayan age only started 4,200 years ago.

              It seems all the recent ages are only a few thousand years each (until 2018 the last 10,000 or so were one age, but this was split in three in 2018).

              After all that reading I still didn’t really understand how they decided that this was a new age.

              But anyway, I agree there isn’t going to be any difference between 2,000 and 4,000 years so we might as well consider Pompeii fossilised even if not strictly true under the definition. I’m just surprised we consider anything within human history to be a previous geological age, but it seems we do.