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Giant Dinosaurs Were Fastest Growing Animals Ever
sciencehabit writes "Lufengosaurus, a long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in China during the Jurassic period, were the biggest animals of their age, measuring 30 feet long. Now, fossilized embryos reveal that they were also the fastest growing animals on record — 'faster than anything we have ever seen,' according to one researcher. What's more, researchers have found traces of organic matter in their bones, which may belong to the oldest fossil proteins ever found."
cue the "my dinosaur is the fastest growing on earth: it grows 9 inches per second" jokes.
mov ax,4c00h
int 21h
Jurassic Park them for meat!
Tried and failed to read the full article in the Science magazine, it's a paywall, unfortunately
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
cue the "my dinosaur is the fastest growing on earth: it grows 9 inches per second" jokes.
Full length in a quarter second? Impressive!
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Imperial or metric quarter?
Obviously they haven't heard of Cowboyneal
Or maybe it has something to do with higher amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere millions of years ago.
Or they just had more oxygen in the air and food to eat from than nowadays, even maybe better digestive system! Who knows?
Yeah, because the limiting factor in cellular division is copying DNA.
Protip: It's not.
When I was a student in the early 1990s I was introduced to the concept of 'junk' DNA. I didn't believe in it then, and now it turns out that scientists find more and more interesting information in 'junk' DNA that is necessary for an organism to grow and function.
-- Cheers!
I you'd bothered to read the wikipedia link you provided (I just did), you'd know a large percentage of non-coding DNA is known to have some function. It just doesn't code proteins. The precentage that is thought to be of no use (and thus one day might rightfully be called junk) is very low. Plus, this percentage could change as more and more is learnt by science.
I have mod points, but there is no choice for "Full Retard".
Silence is a state of mime.
Or maybe it has something to do with higher amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere millions of years ago.
More likely carbon. Plants and the animals they eat them are mostly made of water and carbon. The carbon comes from the air. The less CO2 there is in the air the more slowly plants and animals grow.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
If they are the fastest growing animal ever, it seems like the perfect candidate for efficient protein source farming. I mean, come on, what could possibly go wrong?
Maybe the scientists currently on the DNA-decode job should bring in some reverse-engineers, or e.g. the MAME team, to figure out just how the decoding truly goes, since the "junk" seems to be used less as copyable data and more like arcane utility code. Interdisciplinary study and all that.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
it turns out that scientists find more and more interesting information in 'junk' DNA that is necessary for an organism to grow and function.
Just as with software development. What looks like junk is usually the core of the system.
... it made dinosaurs grow too much !
How would they know if a dinosaur fossil is from 1 year old or 2 years old? Carbon dating isn't that specific. They'd be guessing that a dinosaur was fully grown at X amount of years and then sort of backtrack it but it's basically a complete guess.
The article doesn't mention much about how fast they really grew.
How long did it take them to reach adult size, for example?
And related: what was the approx. lifespan of such animals?
How could they manage the food intake for that growth? This are plant eaters, and plants are not the most efficient sources of energy - leaves are pretty hard to digest, especially compared to meat. So they must eat a lot of it (probably pretty much constantly), and have a rather efficient digestive system that can handle the huge quantities of food.
Maybe chicken tastes like dinosaur
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
What in the hell are you talking about, and why is this modded informative? There's no correlation between the amount of non-coding DNA and rates of cell division or success as species. Junk DNA does not continuously accumulate "more and more every generation". Stuff gets cut out too. It's more of an equilibrium.
The analogy is an amusing one, but not correct in terms of the implications for living things. Some organisms have TONS of non-coding DNA and replicate and reproduce just fine compared to closely-related species that don't. Replication is a massively parallelized process, which is one of the reasons why so much non-coding DNA can accumulate with little apparent effect. Certainly if there was a huge and serious burden to having a lot of non-coding DNA, along the lines of what you describe, it would become pretty obvious when comparing between species with different amounts. It's not obvious at all.
I'm sure all that "junk" DNA has a function.
If it really slows down growth, it'd be an evolutionary disadvantage over those who do not carry all that junk DNA around for they'd grow up faster, and spend less time being small and vulnerable. Dinos are point in case: they're believed to grow so big as protection against predators, be so big that they can't kill you any more. So also they had to grow very fast, as being any smaller would mean they're vulnerable.
Also, why would we have picked up so much junk DNA if it really has no function at all? That just doesn't make sense to me.
So much wrong in a single post . . . +4 Informative??? There isn't a single sentence that isn't egregiously incorrect.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Don't worry, he's already there.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Junk DNA is basically this:
http://cs.nyu.edu/courses/fall11/CSCI-GA.2965-001/geneticalgex
We are very complex machines with LOTS of unexpected connections. Take out one little bit of "junk" DNA, the whole thing collapses because of the utterly bizarre inter-dependencies that have evolved over millions of years.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
That repertoire turns out to be more intriguing than Thompson could
have imagined. Although the configuration program specified tasks for
all 100 cells, it transpired that only 32 were essential to the
circuit's operation. Thompson could bypass the other cells without
affecting it. A further five cells appeared to serve no logical
purpose at all--there was no route of connections by which they could
influence the output. And yet if he disconnected them, the circuit
stopped working.
It appears that evolution made use of some physical property of these
cells--possibly a capacitive effect or electromagnetic inductance--to
influence a signal passing nearby. Somehow, it seized on this subtle
effect and incorporated it into the solution.
-------------
Another challenge is to make the circuit work over a wide temperature
range. On this score, the human digital scheme proves its
worth. Conventional microprocessors typically work between -20 0C and
80 0C. Human designers set the clock so that chip components have
enough time to settle into a digital value. As many computer hackers
know, they can turn up the clock speed if they keep the temperature of
the microprocessor low because the transistors settle into their on or
off states more quickly when cold.
Thompson's evolved circuit only works over a 10 0C range--the
temperature range in the laboratory during the experiment. This is
probably because the temperature changes the capacitance, resistance
or some other property of the circuit's components. Whatever the
cause, this is a serious drawback. If the circuit needs a temperature
controller to enable it to operate, then it is no longer a cheap,
low-power device. But evolution could come to the rescue here as well.
In a future genetic algorithm, Thompson plans to score circuits not
only on how well they perform an electronic task, but also on how well
they cope with temperature variation. Evolution might, for example,
create a design that includes a set of subcircuits each of which
operates over a different temperature range. If this fails to solve
the problem, Thompson will try giving the FPGA a clock. But he won't
tell the circuit what to do with it. "It will be a resource--we'll see
what use evolution makes of it," he says.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
I hope you were modded up for your link, and not for your silly hypothesis. From your own link, the "junk" DNA isn't useless junk (emphasis mine).
So, how much junk DNA does a blue whale have? How does your hypothesis go along with the fact that today's humans are taller and heavier than humans just a hundred years ago? Methinks your "hypothesis" is an uneducated guess, that all you know about biology is what you've read in the popular press.
Guys, don't take that comment too seriously, it is without scientific merit.
What's more, researchers have found traces of organic matter in their bones, which may belong to the oldest fossil proteins ever found."
one word: jurassicparkjurassicparkjurassicparkjurassicpark!!!1!!1!
"Fastest growing animals ever" HA!
You need to come to my home state and take a look at some of the mammals we have here. They truck around in their motorized wheelchairs in the isles of Walmart.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
I'm pretty sure I've seen this poster before, although he's listed as AC now. He's a believer in the bizarre snake oil "theory" of Morphic Fields. If you want to see how incredibly stupid some people can be while pretending to be scientifically literate it's an amusing line of research (at least during the periods when it's not infuriating.)
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Junk DNA, even if there are parts that have no code-like function still serve as a source of entropy. This tends to be why inbred children look "funny". While they may be genetically a fine specimen, the lack of entropy becomes noticeable in fractal style growth in body features
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
C'mon, we've all seen it, you toss the capsule in the bathwater, and BOOM, you got yourself a dinosaur in a few seconds, how is this news?
This is because of the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere during that time. The more oxygen in the atmosphere, the bigger things breathing that oxygen become due to pressure.
I wonder if Jesus ever rode one of those big ones?
How big do they become? 200 tons at 33 meters? Yes, I know that adult size does not imply fastest growth, but I'm curious about how fast they reach that size.
Categorizing whatever you don't truly understand as "junk" is the most perfect demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect possible.
Junk is a misnomer. All of DNA is a hodge podge jumble of stuff. It is not nicely sorted and categorized and compacted.
That's very interesting, but can you elaborate on how that works? Has there been research into that?
-- Cheers!
If it is necessary for growth and function, then it isn't junk at all.
No I'm not that guy. I just like to shoot a pistol in the air and see who jumps. I don't actually believe what I posted earlier. It's just the results tend to be more entertaining and amusing than posting a reddit-style circlejerk agreeable or informed post.