Sudden Mass Extinction Event Discovery

Sleen writes: "A new study that will appear in today's issue of the journal Science reports that the mass extinction event that preceded the age of the dinosaurs was much more sudden than expected. This article has some preliminary details. The dinosaurs actually survived this event and went on to be quite successful. But the small mammal-like reptiles did not. At this point they don't know if this cataclysm was caused by an asteroid, like in the case of 65mya at the KT boundary, or if it was caused by excessive volcanism. In the case of the dinosaur extinctions, they were on their way down when the asteroid hit, perhaps being the last straw. But this earlier event that somehow wiped out up to 80% of life on earth didn't kill them off. Interesting..."

Comments

Re:Maybe the extinction was caused...

[DJerman]

Who says it had to be an intelligent species?

The Big Picture

[bitva]

This really puts into perspective just how fast we could be wiped off this place. And how silly things like money, violence and buffer overflows really are.

Dinos go on living

[pubudu]

In the case of the dinosaur extinctions, they were on their way down when the asteroid hit, perhaps being the last straw. But this earlier event that somehow wiped out up to 80% of life on earth didn't kill them off. Interesting...

According to Peter Ward in the CNN article (same link as in /. story),

"Perhaps creatures reproducing with buried eggs survived and large animals with live births did not."

And you all laughed when my dad built a bomb shelter...

evolution

[boarder]

You know... this is one of the things that has always boggled my mind. If it weren't for this mass extinction, then dinosaurs might not have continued. If they hadn't continued and the other small mammal-like reptiles had, would humans have evolved? All of these extremely random occurances that had to happen for us to come about as we are today, happened. That is interesting in and of itself. Some other thought exercises for you:

On another Earth-like planet where things developed just like here, if that extinction doesn't occur will these mammal-like reptiles develop intelligence and rule and populate their solar system? e.g. Divergent Evolution.

Or will natural selection and stuff still produce mammals that become similar to us eventually taking over despite the dominant reptiles? e.g. Convergent Evolution

Would we as humans still evolved if this extinction hadn't occured?

Are these kinds of random occurances NECESSARY to create intelligent life in the universe? If so, there may be much less life out there than I previously thought. I have always thought that even if our solar system is one in a billion able to support life, then there are still billions of galaxies with a billion stars. Therefore there must be other intelligent life out there. If something like this had to occur to create us, maybe the odds aren't so good.

Suppose there is a God or super-intelligent alien race watching over the universe. What if He/They saw that these mammal-like reptiles were poised to take over the planet and create intelligence, but they didn't like their specific personality traits. Would they create this mass extinction to save the universe from a violent species?

I love thinking about fun stuff like this. I'm sure much smarter people than me can come up with much better questions, but you can start really opening up areas of conversation with this.

Re:evolution

[JoeGee]

Does intelligence require a mammalian brain? Octopii might beg to differ. Who knows where reptilian intelligence might have gone had the KT impact not occured?

We are endothermic, we are quick in body and mind, but this does not mean that we are the only answer to the question "what kind of biology is required for sentiency?"

The only answer we have is "human", but we see hints in the world around us that many different forms can acquire insightful intelligence, so it may be premature (and very Gene Roddenberry) to assume that only humanoids can be sentient. :)

Re:evolution

[cnelzie]

Gene Roddenberry did not assume that only humanoids could be inteligent. Of course all the aliens in The Original Series, TOS, were humanoid in appearance. This was due mostly to the costs of makeup than the idea that only humans could be inteligent. If one were too look at several TOS episodes one would be exposed to the idea of reptilian inteligent life by way of the Gorn. I might be mistaken here, but weren't the Tholians composed of minerals?

I am quite certain that if Gene Roddenberry had the money and the special effects wizards of today the Gorns would have appeared far more reptilian and may have been more crouched and had tails. Just look at the changes the Klingons took from TOS to the Star Trek Movies and The Next Generation, TNG.

In the Next generation, there was an episode that showed the idea of snake-like inteligent life that resembled hooded cobras. There was also an episode that showed a race that appeared almost like large inteligent trout in robes.

Re:evolution

[PD]

The fact that the random events unfolded in an unlikely sequence that led to homo sapiens does not imply divine intervention. If we weren't here, something else would be here, probably marveling at how unlikely their existence was.

After all, it's pretty unlikely that an individual person will win the lottery, but somehow, it happens quite frequently. Did god guide the numbers? After all, just one number different and the winner wouldn't have won at all.

Re:evolution

[JoeGee]

As I recall the dictum in the series Roddenberry oversaw, the original Trek, as well as NexGen was "no nonhumanoid regulars". This may have been due to budgetary concerns, but as I recall Roddenberry made this decision so that his viewing audience would not find aliens "too alien." In any case, the regular races are all bilaterally symmetrical bipeds.

Xelatians might be an exception, but we never see them out of their environment suits. The acidic carpet, the Horta from "Devil in the Dark", like the Tholians, was a one-shot. We seldom saw Odo in his non-solid guise, and the Chameloid from the "Undiscovered Country" was remarkably humanoid in every form it took.

My point is that we cannot make the assumption that the Star Trek panoply of aliens is what awaits us in space. If we run into bilaterally symmetric bipeds with the frequency of the denizens of the Trek universe, then something about our universe is really wierd.

Even within our own biosphere two rear or lower appendages, two upper or forward appendages, ten fingers, ten toes, a distinct head, two eyes, two nostrils, and a horizontally-opening mouth is not the most common configuration.

By sheer volume of biomass -- or even of species -- six-legged multi-eyed endothermic animals with exoskeletons are much more common than vertibrates with human-like features.

Re:Considering that this came from B.C.

[Ancient Eye]

While the rhetoric of this post is certainly a little harsh, there is a nugget (heck, a chunk of ore) in what he is saying. Science has always been about disproving God. Even when scientists claimed to be finding the hand of God in his handiwork as Kepler and Copernicus did, nothing more did they do than attempt to wrest God's power away from Him.

Pt. 1, I believe you are trolling

Ignoring that I have pt 2.
If you wish to take the view that the fall from Eden is reversible by deliberate ignorance, I certainly cannot convince you otherwise. I don't intend this as a personal attack, but from such a standpoint I doubt any level of discussion can convince you, since logic is one of the ultimate expressions of the forbidden knowledge of the difference between "right and wrong". That too, notwithstanding, I put forth that in the hostile environment God put man in following the fall (the world outside of Eden) mankind had two choices, use knowledge, understanding, science, technology and ingenuity, or cease. I personally believe the former to be the correct decision.
Any standpoint that the latter is the only justifiable choice rests on the assumption that God wished Adam and Eve dead, but wanted them to extinguish themselves, and provides further opportunity to defy him by giving them the ability to birth children.
You may say "God gave man another choice, righteous death, or sinful continuation". But I say that is wholly unreasonable. And if you reply "God isn't subject to reason" I say that the knowledge derived from science and reason is not God's power, but some small detail of man's free will, and out right to exercise our will has been upheld by God, even if he reserves the right to punish those who choose to act in ways that offend him.

Re:Considering that this came from B.C.

[Teun]

Pt. 1, I too believe (hope..) the man is trolling.

Pt. 2, One of the best and yet understandable reasonings on this subject I've seen! Indeed the anti Darwinist (anti-evolutionary or pro-creationist) lobby is again mistaking 'right and wrong' with 'your sinful and my rightious' opinion. The biggest sinners are those that claim all their doings are from god's devine will whilst conveniently forgetting their own responsabilities.

Re:Maybe the extinction was caused...

[Teun]

Surely we would have found the Coke cans and assiociated trash as witnesses.....

NYTimes coverage

[jeffsenter]

Here is the NYTimes article

Extraterrestial Safari

[obidobi]

I think it was an armada of alien pirates that made a stop at our beautifull planetary island. They filled up their hold with food and water and for the fun of it they kill of 80% of the planets population.

When leaving out solar system they made a stop at the 5th planet which they used for target practice. That one piece of the former planet happend to crash on earth and kill of the rest of the dinosaures were just bad luck.

By the way if you really what to know what happened to the 5th planet you should read a book called The Gigants Novel. A fantastic piece of scifi and i think superb material for a film!

A must read for any respectable computer nerd ;)

Re:Maybe the extinction was caused...

[SIGFPE]

-2, Troll. WTF? Look at the fossil record for the US. Many large mammals mysteriously vanish at about the same time humans arrive over a geologically short time period. How was my comment a troll?
--

Re:Maybe the extinction was caused...

[SIGFPE]

Do you think Coke cans might last 200,000,000 years? I'm fairly sure there'd be little trace after 2,000 years and certainly no trace after 20,000. Maybe nuclear waste might be detectable...
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Re:Considering that this came from B.C.

[Omega996]

i always thought it was 'toe the line', as in perilously close to stepping over, but never quite doing so...

Re:Considering that this came from B.C.

[Omega996]

actually, i would think that a rational religion would have no difficulties between a supreme power and science. i don't get it, is science a by-product of Her miraculous power, or a meaningless artifact of existance? i don't think so...

Re:Considering that this came from B.C.

[Ancient Eye]

Then you admit that the view of science as the destroyer and enemy of God is a valid and possibly true proposition.

(This is simple-restatement of my previous comment.) Science -is- a detail of free-will. Free-will is upheld by God, even though God punishes people who exercise their free will to certain ends. (i.e. Free will=upheld regardless, punishment may still ensue, and that does not impugn God's continued support of free-will)

(In response) No, I don't. I admit the possibility that scientists may act in ways abhorrent to God. But there has never been any biblical indication that the any act of science is abhorrent to God ANY MORE. In Eden, knowing right from wrong (an act of science) was reserved for God. Mankind claimed that power as their own. God punished man for that, then set man into the world knowing they would continue to perform acts of science or die. I can not accept that God expelled man from Eden with the expectation that man should choose death (to please him) and simultaneously presented man with the command to be fruitful and multiply.

With that I would have to agree

[cnelzie]

You are quite correct that there is bound to be many insect-lik creatures roaming the galaxy in this planet or that. Of course that is very true on our planet. On another planet with a completly diferent evolutionary path anything is possible. Creatures with three legs and no real 'front' could be the main species. On another planet the inteligent species might have evolved out of practically anything we could think of.

Based upon my reading of bound collections of paper sequentially ordered with symbols representing sounds and ideas regarding Star Trek, specifically 'I am Spock' by Leonard Nimoy. The character of Spock was made more human as Gene believed that the viewers would not understand a completely alien creaure and there was the costs involved with the makeup at the time.

Of course the rest of this is simply conjecture as most of the inteligent and semi-inteligent species on this planet are bipedal mammals. Mountain Gorillas show some inteligence, Chimpanzees show inteligence and many of our fellow bipedal hairless ape neighbors also show some inteligence as well.

Of course some scientists recently performed some inteligence tests with Dolphins and have proven that they can recognize themselves in the mirror and will look at marks that have been added to their bodies. Something that was once thought only possible with the brains located in the skulls of apes and of course the hairless apes that we are.

As for the existense of insectoid inteligence I would have to put forth that it would be very unlikely. While many insects are 'social' creatures many of the them are in hive environs. For the most part the only insect in the hive that is supposed to have inteligence would be the queen and even that would be debatable.

Since this dicussion could go on for ages and the end result is impossible to determine as it is highly unlikely that we will be able to bring actual alien life into this conversation. I shall leave you with the above thoughts.

Re:With that I would have to agree

[JoeGee]

Good thoughts they are. Thank you. :)