A change of subject. (932 hits)
Category: Science & EnvironmentalRating: 0.67 on 22 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Martes pennanti <fisher.at.go.com> (View user info) at 2002-06-20 22:43:15 EDT
I don't know how to change the subject from people bashing each other to something more respectful. I not good at starting a topic. So if anyone has something on their mind about, say the environment, go ahead and give it a go.
That's a topic that interests me. I don't know how many of you are environmental majors, but I'm one.
Here's something interesting. I don't know if any of you know this but the saber-toothed cat helped humans evolve into what we are today. That's if you believe in evolution by natural selection. The reason is because to have a high powered brain, such as ours, you need lots of protein (usually by way of meat). This is why predators are generally smarter than prey species. Anyway, Homo habilis an early relative of the Homo sapien was able to take advantage of saber-toothed kills. Saber-toothed cats (all of you should know of them) were massive killing machines but couldn't finish their meals because of their large fangs. So, as a result, they wasted a lot. Homo habilis frequent these kills and as a result became a meal. What occurred from that selective pressure was that Homo habilis needed to get the meat and go. In doing so, he/she took a rock or something and conceptualized an image (that there is the pivot point) and he would carve the stone and use it to carve the meat from the carcass and get the hell out of there. But he/she never took the tool with them. That practice was started by H. erectus. So now in the human tree you have our ancestors eating lots of meat, improving the quality of their brains by ways of getting the meat, and then developing social skills by bringing the meat back to a homebase and sharing it.
I'm sure there are some arguments agains't what I've posted, but it's all guess work on what evidence the experts have found in the field. But hell, it's a change of subject.
Peace
User Reviews
Submitted by missflibble (user info) at 2005-07-13 08:08:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
googlymoogly, who the hell updated this?
Submitted by indigogecko (user info) at 2005-07-13 07:41:44 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
ancient.. yet relevant. It's a clear indication uberites bash each other for sport far too much.
and yes, I realise that sounds wrong.
Submitted by rad1101 (user info) at 2005-07-13 07:15:15 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
(Rating: 0.53 on 19 reviews, last by Fisher 3 years ago)
wow, this shit is ancient.
Submitted by Fisher (user info) at 2002-07-02 11:59:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
The asteroid that is claimed to have struck the Yucatan Peninsula is thought to have affected climate, atmospheric, and oceanic chemistry all over the world. They know this because the Chicxulub (where it struck) sediments (anhydrite, also known as CaSO4, quartz, and microtektites) were found far to the north and west of the impact area confirming that large quantities of these materials were ejected from the sight and more was vaporized and melted from the impact itself.
The impact was to put lots of SO2 and water vapor in the air. The molecules reacted to form H2SO2, with acid rain resulting. SO2 (sulfur dioxide) is also a strong scatterer of solar radation in the visible spectrum, which would lead to global cooling. The cooling effect was enhanced by dust-sized carbonate, granitic, and other particles.
Further, large soot deposits at numerous K-T boundary localities suggest widespread wildfires, perhaps triggered by the fireball of hot gas and particules expelled from the impact site. The ash and soot produced by massive fires would have added to the global cooling.
Models also show that the impact may have caused massive earthquakes, perhaps as large as 13 on a Richter scale. These may have caused widespread volcanoe activity further adding to SO2, CO2, and ash to the atmosphere.
And finally, the impact would have caused huge tsunamis on the Atlantic Ocean. They have found evidence of this by finding sandstone deposits in Texas and all over northern Mexico. Also, the impact would have affected ocean life by reducing the primary production of phytoplankton and local temperature regimes and chemical gradients in the Atlantic were disrupted.
The discovery of the crater was the long-sought smoking gun. It solidified a consensus among paleontologists, physicists, geologists, and astronomers that a large asteroid struck the Earth 65 Ma. The existence of the impact is no longer controversial; the consequences of the impact are.
As far as no plant life during a nuclear winter is not totally true. Plant life could exist. As long as there is not complete darkness. The actual diversity of species would drop to extremely small numbers and systems would become extremely simplified, but that's not to say that life can't exist a nuclear winter. I think it can. It would be interesting to see the types of organisms to cope with those selection pressures. But, look at the chemotrophs that survive in the deep ocean vents. They do it by converting SO2 and other chemicals to energy just like plants photosynthesize light. So, I believe in reset button myself it's just unfortunate we're the ones who are going to hit it and not be there for the results.
The sabertooth cat did exist during early H. sapien's early years. They are not refered to as tigers in the scientific field because they weren't tigers and they were other species of the sabertooth. They did dine on humans. I'm not sure what caused their extinction, but I think it had to do with new species of smaller and faster cats coming into the scene.
As far as birds, experts do believe them to be direct descendents of dinosaurs. Cladistic methods point us in those directions.
Here's something interesting for those of you who don't already know this. Plants don't grow towards sunlight, they grow away from it. The reason is because sunlight inhibits auxin, a growth hormone. Yes, sunlight is vital to their existence. But, if you put a plant up to a window it seems to grow towards sunlight because the shaded portion is actually putting on mass making that end heavier and causing the plant to bend torwards to sunlight. How else would a seed germinate and grow under soil with no light.
Anyway, sorry for the long reply. Peace.
Submitted by ISuck (user info) at 2002-06-27 13:19:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I'm glad somebody enjoyed it, thanks for noticing.
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2002-06-27 09:25:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Hey ISuck... that was great. I got it even if noone else did.
Submitted by Zanz38 (user info) at 2002-06-27 04:44:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
With the impact of the Meteor it sent a firestorm surging round the globe killing a high percentage of Dino's some choked to death with all the dust storms, then the Ice caps grew causing the Ice age and we see the wooly mammoth starting to disapear now due to the lack of food, the only things that truely survived were sea creatures. thats how i think it went!
Submitted by Dave at 2002-06-27 02:50:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
MassD: Nice one :)
Submitted by MassD (user info) at 2002-06-26 11:20:02 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Dave: That was me with the "Planetary Reset" button.
Submitted by ISuck (user info) at 2002-06-26 11:01:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I believe that history tells us that not only did the sabertooth coexist with early man, but they were actually domesticated. In fact, they were rather wiley housepets! Not ones to be put outside for the night, they were known to jump back into its owner's house through an open window, close the door, and leave his master locked outside! Early man's only recourse the was to shout haplessly for his wife; although one wonders why he didn't simply go through the same open window as the sabertooth...
Submitted by JDiggity (user info) at 2002-06-25 22:13:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I realize temperatures would not plummet to absolute zero, but I think a healthy 200k is not out of the question. Let's just say it's not ideal weather for hawaiian shirt and baggy shorts.
Anyways ... interesting. I'm not so sure I like that theory as much as I did before I really thought about it.
Question about the sabertooth:
Where they around the same time as early man, or did they go extinct before?
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2002-06-25 13:41:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Couple things -
#1 That thing about the moon isn't true. It appears that it probably did collide with the Earth at one point, but that likely happened long long long before the dinosaurs - probably before there was life on this planet at all.
#2 In a nuclear winter, it's not neccessarily that there's NO heat whatsoever - I mean if it dropped down to absolute zero or whateever you're suggesting molecular movement would stop and nothing whatsoever would live.
All it really takes is a minor (relatively) shift. The thing that really sets off a cataclysmic period of extinction like that is the death of the things on the bottom of the food chain - phytoplankton and such. That causes everything to starve all the way up.
The ones that survive are the ones who can live with little light, or in very cold weather, or are in the right spot and can regulate their own body temperature.
I believe that's part of what did the dinosaurs in and why the mammals survived - they may have been cold as hell but they were warm blooded and were able to eke out a living. Most things couldn't.
Also - don't forget that some dinosaurs did survive - I don't know this for sure but I'd bet they were the ones that flew to the equatorial areas and managed to eke out a living (birds)
Submitted by Dave at 2002-06-25 00:10:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I was reading about our environment and the damage we are doing to it, etc. One quote I quite liked went along the lines of:
In the greater scheme of things, it doesn't really matter how much we screw the planet up - all thats going to happen is we will trigger the old "Planetary Reset" button, wiping ourselves and everything else out. Then the earth will just go about it's business and wait for the next species to come along.
Submitted by JDiggity (user info) at 2002-06-24 20:15:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting. I also remember hearing some people claim that the same meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs blew a chunk of the earth off which is now called the moon. I don't know if I buy that one though.
Anyways, I realise your (probably) not an expert on the situation, but here's a thought which popped into my mind - or better yet fisher may know something about this - in a nuclear winter situation, one strong enough to kill all the plants and thus fuck your food chain, 0 - and i mean nil - sunlight reaches the planet. Thus no sun for plants, and more importantly - no heat for animals and living creatures. From what I gather, this is what ends up killing most species, then the rest die off due to lack of food. (The rest being insects and other more resilient, less fragile creatures).
So, if the world was suddenly a giant south pole (but even the south pole gets alittle sun, so in theory it should be even colder then that) wouldn't that spell doom for every dinosaur within a few days, and shouldn't the chain end immidiatly?
Since this arguement is backed by thousands of professionals in the field, i'm not saying they're wrong. just wondering...
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2002-06-24 11:49:20 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Well as far as the dinosaurs go, I believe that the chain of thinking went like this:
First, the fossil record shows some kind of terrible catastrophe occurred, for there's a massive extinction in what is evolutionarily speaking a very very short time. This massive chain of extinction ate its way up the entire food chain, and not much was left at the end. So they knew SOMETHING happened to cause everything to screw up.
There's a massive impact crater in Mexico I believe? Maybe in the Gulf of Mexico? Maybe it IS the gulf of mexico... I'm not too clear but I know it's down there somewhere.
Anyway, the impact crater appears from the geological record to be from around the same time. And it was a big enough asteroid that it would have kicked up enough dust to cause a "nuclear winter" kind of effect.
That's my understanding anyway.
Submitted by JDiggity (user info) at 2002-06-21 23:30:11 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
In this field, how do you decide whos right and wrong? Is there any way of assuring me that aliens didn't beam down and implant larger brains in monkeys, shave them down, and make the walk on 2 feet?
Where did the idea come from that mammals evolved from seacritters?
How do you figure a meteor wiped out dinosaurs?
It's interesting really ... but very odd all at the same time.
Submitted by Fisher (user info) at 2002-06-21 18:44:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
Holy shit. I got what I asked for. Thanks bossman.
People in my field have lots of options based on their interests. The environmental field is getting really big. As for myself, I'm in the ecology field. Right now I'm interning with a recovery program on the east coast. I'm not going to name it because it is extremely well respected and I don't want to my opinions reflected poorly on it. Hopefully you understand. But what I do here is track the movements of a predator that Fish and Wildlife caused to go extinct in the wild and then attempted to reintroduce it into a better political habitat.
In a year, hopefully I'll be on my way to graduate school to for ecology. The field I'm interested in is predator-prey interactions and species-habitat relationships. I'd explain more but it's Friday. I take the weekends off and my roommates and I have some brews waiting for us.
Peace
Submitted by ISuck (user info) at 2002-06-21 14:55:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Shit that joke sucked; just ignore that post please.
Submitted by ISuck (user info) at 2002-06-21 14:42:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
I heard that things are pretty much the same way still in Canada.
Submitted by MassD (user info) at 2002-06-21 10:28:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
I agree with that. Intelligence is a result of competition. Early humanoids were not well suited to be predators. They were small, weak, and slow. But they had one thing that the rest of the animals didn't have, the ability to reason. They couldn't just roll up on some animal and overpower it, they had to be sneaky... they did sneaky things like tricking a bison or mammoth to fall over a cliff...
Those little bastards got clever really quick. And once they reached the tool-making age, the balance of power was forever shifted towards our lineage. They were no longer had to adapt to their environment, they adapted their environment to them. They no longer had to wait for the saber toothed cat to finish before moving in, they just moved in, killed the cat, and ate both him and his catch.
That is how things work.
Submitted by lodnem.at.yahoo.com at 2002-06-21 01:59:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
who you calling a homo?....someone had to say it, sorry ;)
that was interesting, but i've a bigger question for you if you don't mind.
exactly what does someone with your major end up doing for a living?
Submitted by Fisher (user info) at 2002-06-20 22:47:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
We should have a science/environmental category.