5 ms·
Inevitably, reading this makes me think of the well-known quote by Jeff Goldlum's character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, in Jurassic Park: "life finds a way."
by cs702 7y ago
Inevitably, reading this makes me think of the well-known quote by Jeff Goldlum's character, Dr. Ian Malcolm, in Jurassic Park:
"life finds a way."
- kzrdude 7y agoWe are life, and we'll need find adaptions too.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoNo we are not life, we are living beings. Life finds a way but living beings die and their species go extinct.
- 8bitsrule 7y agoMegafauna being a fine example. Mastodons, dire wolves ... many theories, but nobody has a lock on what wiped them out ... not long ago. It's been said that many of the surviving non-surficial (unscavenged) bones are found buried in debris. (Alaskan muck, e.g.) We humans are found at the smaller end of the megafauna scale (weight > 40kg). Maybe hiding in the earth was helpful. It may be again.
- apalmer 7y agoI thought it was generally accepted that the die off in megafauna over the last 40k was human related?
- jcranmer 7y agoThe general acceptance is that megafauna extinction is the result of some mix of climate change and human action, and this mix varies in different areas. In Eurasia, the consensus is "mostly climate change." For Australia, it is "mostly human." For South America and Africa, I don't know what the consensus is. For North America, the only strong consensus you will find is for both factors to be implicated, with vehement disagreement over the degree to which factor is stronger. The megafauna extinction event happens to occur at the same time as both the Clovis period and the Younger Dryas onset, which means the timing doesn't really work better for one or the other factor. However, we have since learned more about human migration to the Americas (humans arrived a few millennia before Clovis, although the exact amount is disputed), as well as the nature of the Younger Dryas (sharper than expected [1], with the worst effects occurring in some portions of North America). A more realistic approach would be to view North American megafauna of suffering a variety of negative population pressures, with humans providing more of a coup de grace rather than the primary driving factor of their extinction. [1] 10 degrees Centigrade in less than a century, maybe even a decade. In other words, sharper than the current climate change concerns.
- throwaway5752 7y agoThat is part of the Holocene extinction error. Human overhunting and climate change killed megafauna: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07897-1 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-07897-1
- revscat 7y agoSometimes Dr. Malcolm is wrong, though. Sometimes life doesn’t find a way. Sometimes there are mass extinctions.
- reallydoe 7y agoAnd there were things that lived through those mass extinctions. So he wasn't wrong, since life found a way to continue
- Pfhreak 7y agoLife, in aggregate, still finds a way. Mass extinctions bring down a lot of life but not all of it.
- amylene 7y agoLife, only on earth as far as we know, has previously found a way. Much less catchy, much more accurate.
- michaelcampbell 7y agoWhich could provide an open niche for other life.
- overcast 7y agoMass extinctions is why we're here commenting on HN.
- perfunctory 7y agoYep. Mass extinctions are always fun when they are not happening to you.
- ceejayoz 7y agoSure, but the context of that quote was basically "... to kill you".
- MS90 7y agoThe context was reproduction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oijEsqT2QKQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oijEsqT2QKQ "You're implying that a group composed entirely of female animals will breed?" "No, I'm simply saying that life, uh, finds a way." Then later on: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-6I8f89K4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dy-6I8f89K4 "Life found a way"
- ceejayoz 7y agoUltimately, his point is "these very dangerous animals will find a way to escape your control". Breeding becomes a particular problem in the book because the computer system is only programmed to count up to the expected number of animals, and not show an overcount.