Ancient World
By Arjuwan Lakkdawala
Ink in the Internet
I recently heard the Lex Fridman podcast with Dave Hone, a dinosaur expert. It was a brilliant podcast very interesting. It shed light on Earth’s ancient history in regard to these giant creatures that walked our planet. It also horrified me that an asteroid actually hit earth 66 millions years ago. If it happened once it could happen again.
Fears set apart, we hope an asteroid is not coming for earth. It fascinated me how much was going on in the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. How did scientists join the pieces of such an ancient, and enormous jigsaw. This is my understanding of the process from my online research, and some of my thoughts on the matter.
A dinosaur fossil is found; there is no DNA to extract since it decays over millions of years. The best tissue available if preserved is cartilage. The next step is to study ‘geological time' of the rock formation in which the fossil was discovered.
(What is Geological Time: Earth’s ancient history is preserved in layers of soil and rocks. Geologists study the composition of these in detail and to the atomic level. It has traces of what lived on earth from creatures to plants, microorganisms, and what was the environment and climate in Earth’s various periods. Each finding combined creates scientific data to join parts of the jigsaw.)
Isotopes in chemical compounds differ with variations caused in the compound by climate and the ecology. So that’s another method to discern the age of the fossil and its environment, teeth categorize the fossil and especially the diet.
Dave Hone says in the podcast that dinosaurs were “animals” after all, so we can get clues to their nature by other apex predators.
The climate in the Cretaceous Period and sea levels were very high. Does warm climate contribute to large creatures? It is said placental mammals evolved during this period and flowering plants (angiosperms) debuted in the same time scale. Although dinosaurs lay eggs pretty much like reptiles.
Biological rules of temperature and body size are controversial and not reliable. While some in science say cold climate produces large bodies to conserve heat, and warm climate small bodies to lose heat. There are cases in nature that don’t support the rule
However, if not in the animal kingdom in the plant kingdom warm climate appears to contribute to the growth of tall trees and large plants. The baffling question is that we have microscopic life and giants like elephants and the extinct dinosaurs. What is the force that drives evolution into such massive diversity in size?
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle said in the science fiction book ‘Lost World' I quote: “Evolution was not a spent force.” But what are its rules, principles, laws? Why does it seem to be immune to entropy though it is in a closed system, which according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics is experiencing entropy as it ages, yet DNA retains copies of ancestral information and writes new information with variations that affect it during the life of the living entity . These are pretty much still unanswered questions in science.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book 'Flight of Fancy' states the theory that evolution can be described as “economics.” It is an elaboration of Darwin's Theory of 'Survival of the Fittest.'
In the book Dawkins gives various examples of why efficiency and passing of good genes to the next generation is the ultimate goal of evolution, and it is the bases of the nature of all creatures.
While evolution appears to have a common theme in the animal kingdom, scientists cannot explain human intelligence. Or why we are so unique on earth. We definitely appear to be a single species, with no other species similar to the human form, speech, or cognition.
It’s like we are masters of all the creatures of the earth, I feel mankind intelligence is alien – not from earth.
Neuroscience so far confirms to us that neurons are the electrical body of intelligence, consciousness, and carriers of signals – mind to body via spinal cord, and gut to mind via neural pathways and the blood stream.
The more neurons we have the higher our ability to understand and think. However, while this applies in principle, the area of the concentration of neurons is said to be the deciding factor if neurons will be able to contribute to our level of intelligence. For example, the average human has about 86 billion neurons, of which 16.3 billion are in the cerebral cortex. while the African elephant, which has the most neurons 257 billion, has only 5.6 billion in the cerebral cortex.
Scientific studies are increasingly confirming that ecology greatly effects evolution, but yet again this seems to apply to every living thing on earth except humans – humans from everywhere on earth have the same fundamental features.
The Mesozoic Era was from 252 to 66 million years ago, it is divided in three periods: Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous.
According to online research there were no dinosaurs before this era, but there were other reptiles and mammals.
Earth had a single supercontinent 'Pangaea' at the start of the Mesozoic Era, and then started to gradually break into the shapes we know today during the three periods.
Earth in its elliptical orbit was closer to the sun which could have contributed to the warm climate along with excessive amounts of carbon dioxide which was trapped in the atmosphere at the time. The ice age had still not begun.
Paleogenetics is a developing field of science to study ancient DNA (aDNA.)
Arjuwan Lakkdawala is an author and independent researcher in science
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